“No, I don’t want to read to-night,” said Emmeline, going out of the room.
No, she did not want to read: she wanted to think.
CHAPTER III
ON the morning after the day on which the two girls watched the polo and drank tea with Mr. Dyke, Margaret went back to her kind husband and two sweet little children at Hindhead, where they lived in a red-brick catastrophe of the largest size that Pratt had brought about among the beeches and pines only a few years previously. On the afternoon of that day Mr. Dyke called in Prince’s Gate for the purpose of offering thanks by word of mouth for the invitation which he had already accepted with pen and ink. Mrs. Verinder said that he was amiable but untidy, and a sticker. She thought he would never go.
At dinner a night later—when only Eustace had been claimed by society and the other three remained at home—Mr. Verinder talked again of Anthony Dyke.
It appeared, said Mr. Verinder, that Dyke began his career as a hunter of big game in Africa, where, together with his companion, the eccentric Duke of Ravenna, he had been badly mauled by lions.
“The other night, while we were talking, I noticed some disfiguring marks on both cheekbones, and I should not be surprised if they were the signs of the clawing to which I allude. Whatever they were, he will carry them to his grave.” And Mr. Verinder went on to say that Dyke’s next scene of operations was Australia, where he had penetrated the unknown desert country in all directions.