“He will take his leave immediately after dinner. He has declined Uncle Lionel’s invitation to stay all night.”
“You will have to see him again before he goes?”
“Yes—just for a minute or two. I shall not dine with him.”
“Be careful.”
“There is not the slightest cause for fear. But here he comes.”
Edith’s eyes met his for a moment, and her lips broke into a smile. She disappeared just as Kester St. George opened the glass door that led from the garden into the villa.
CHAPTER X.
BACK AGAIN AT PARK NEWTON
General St. George’s health improved so rapidly that, contrary to his first intention, he decided that he would return to England at once and, if possible, get settled down somewhere by Christmas. As he was running his eyes through the “Times” one day he saw, to his intense astonishment, that Park Newton was advertised as to be let. By the next post he sent a brief note to Kester, calling his attention to the advertisement, and asking him the meaning of it. In due course he received the following reply:
“ My Dear Uncle,—The advertisement to which you allude has no other meaning than is visible on the surface of it. Park Newton is empty, and empty it will remain as far as I am concerned. Why not, therefore, try to find a tenant for it, and make at the same time a welcome addition to my income? I know what you will say—that, as the head of the family, it is my duty to live in the family home. That is very well from your point of view, but to me the place is burdened with a memory so terrible (which time can never efface or cause to fade from my mind) that for me to live there is a sheer impossibility.
“But, apart from all this, I think you know me sufficiently well to feel sure that to me a country life would soon become insupportable. After the first freshness had worn off—after I had eaten some of my own peaches and drunk some of my own buttermilk—after I had been duly coached by my bailiff in the mysteries of subsoils and top-dressings—and after going through all the dull round of bucolic hospitality: I should be sure to cut the whole affair in disgust some fine day, and not recover my peace of mind till after a little dinner at the Trois Frères and a stall at the Gymnase.