“So, as he will not thank you himself, you must let me thank you.” And Mary held out the hand she had hitherto kept in her muff. She was determined not to be a prude.
He pressed it discreetly. “I am glad,” he said. “Very glad. Perhaps after this he may think better of me.”
She laughed. “I don’t think that there is a chance of it,” she said.
“No? Well, I suppose it was foolish, but do you know, I did hope that this might bring us together.”
“You may dismiss it,” she answered, smiling.
“Ah!” he said. “Then tell me this. How in the world did he come to be there? Without a hat? Without a coat? And so far from the house?”
Mary hesitated. He had turned, they were walking side by side. “I am not sure that I ought to tell you,” she said. “What I know I gathered from a word that Mr. Audley let fall when he was rambling. He seems to have had some instinct, some feeling that you were there and to have been forced to learn if it was so.”
“But forced? By what?” Lord Audley asked. “I don’t understand.”
“I don’t understand either,” Mary answered.
“He could not know that we were there?”