“I know you don’t mean to be irreverent, dear Temple,” she had gasped, “I am quite sure you don’t. It is—it is only your American way of expressing your kind thoughts.” Somehow or other, he was always so comforting.
He held her arm as they took their walk. She had become used to that also, and no longer thought it odd. It was only one of the ways he had of making her feel that she was being taken care of. They had not been able to have many walks together since the arrival of the visitors, and this occasion was at once a cause of relief and inward rejoicing. The entire truth was that she had not been altogether happy about him of late. Sometimes, when he was not talking and saying amusing New York things which made people laugh, he seemed almost to forget where he was and to be thinking of something which baffled and tried him. The way in which he pulled himself together when he realized that any one was looking at him was, to her mind, the most disturbing feature of his fits of abstraction.
As they walked through the park and the village, her heart was greatly warmed by the way in which every person they met greeted him. They liked him, really liked him. Every man touched his cap or forehead with a friendly grin. It was as if there were some extremely human joke between them. Miss Alicia had delightedly remembered the Duke of Stone’s saying that he was “the most popular man in the county.”
Tembarom was rather silent during the first part of their walk, and when he spoke it was of Captain Palliser.
“He’s a fellow that’s got lots of curiosity. I guess he’s asked you more questions than he’s asked me,” he began at last, and he looked at her interestedly, though she was not aware of it.
“I thought,—” she hesitated slightly because she did not wish to be critical,—“I sometimes thought he asked me too many. He asked so much about you and your life in New York, but more, I think, about you and Mr. Strangeways. He was really quite persistent once or twice about poor Mr. Strangeways.”
“What did he ask?”
“He asked if I had seen him, and if you had preferred that I should not. He calls him your mystery, and thinks your keeping him here is so extraordinary.”
“I guess it is, the way he’d look at it,” Tembarom dropped in.