Her eyes remained upon the boy, and I saw the passion rise in them, at which I turned mine elsewhere. Who can look unperturbed upon such a privacy of nature as that?
‘Poor old Judy!’ she went on. ‘She never would be bothered with him in all his dear hobble-dehoy time; she resented his claims, the unreasonable creature, used to limit me to three anecdotes a week; and now she has him on her hands, if you like. See the pretty air of deference in the way he listens to her! He has nice manners, the villain, if he is a Chichele!’
‘Oh, you have improved Sir Peter’s,’ I said kindly.
‘I do hope Judy will think him worth while. I can’t quite expect that he will be up to her, bless him, she is so much cleverer, isn’t she, than any of us? But if she will just be herself with him it will make such a difference.’
The other two crossed the room to us at that, and Judy gaily made Somers over to his mother, trailing off to find Robert in the billiard-room.
‘Well, what has Mrs. Harbottle been telling you?’ Anna asked him.
The young man’s eye followed Judy, his hand went musingly to his moustache.
‘She was telling me,’ he said, ‘that people in India were sepulchers of themselves, but that now and then one came who could roll away another’s stone.’
‘It sounds promising,’ said Lady Chichele to me.
‘It sounds cryptic,’ I laughed to Somers, but I saw that he had the key.