“That would be highly injudicious. I think I had better not appear——”
“As you please. You throw up your cards, then, and Félicia will just marry Usk.”
“You place me in a most difficult position, but rather than lose Félicia——”
“I thought so. Then you would better go way back to the Riviera right now, and make a little gentle love to the Grand-Duchess Sonya, just to keep your folks sort of interested, you know. I’ll let you hear when you’re wanted.”
CHAPTER IX.
A CHANGE OF VENUE.
“Why, Uncle Cyril! how awfully good of you to come and meet me!” Yet Usk’s eyes strayed to the dogcart waiting in the road just beyond the station fence, and the stolid groom in charge of it. “Is—is any one else here?”
“No; Félicia is not here. What do you think of putting your bag into the cart, and walking up?”
“All right. I shall be glad to stretch my legs. Félicia isn’t ill, is she?”
“I saw no signs of it when I started. But why should you expect her to meet you? I understood you and she had quarrelled?”
“Quarrelled? Why, it was nothing—the most utter nonsense! She never wrote me a word for four whole days, though. But I wrote to her every day, and at last, on the fifth evening, I had a letter from her—an awfully jolly letter, but making the most tremendous fuss about the way she had behaved, calling herself names, and all sorts of things. It seemed so uncalled-for that I really thought she must be going to be ill, for she’s not a bit morbid generally, is she?”