“Oh, nonsense. You may as well go. What is the use of professing to keep observances that you don’t understand? And it will be some amusement for you, for I dare say both of you will immediately go and ask some old cab-driver to have luncheon with you, or buy a nosegay of flowers for his horse.”
The permission was not very gracious, but Sheila accepted it, and very shortly after breakfast she changed her dress and went out. How pleasant it was to know that she was going to see her old friend, to whom she could talk freely! The morning seemed to know of her gladness, and to share in it, for there was a brisk Southerly breeze blowing fresh in from the sea, and the leaves were leaping white in the sunlight. There was no more sluggishness in the air, or the gray sky, or the leaden plain of the sea. Sheila knew that the blood was mantling in her cheeks; that her heart was full of joy; that her whole frame so tingled with life and spirit that, had she been in Borva, she would have challenged her deerhound to a race, and fled down the side of the hill with him to the small bay of white sand below the house. She did not pause for a minute when she reached the hotel. She went up the steps, opened the door, and entered the square hall. There was an odor of tobacco in the place, and several gentlemen standing about rather confused her, for she had to glance at them in looking for a waiter. Another minute would probably have found her a trifle embarrassed, but that, just at this crisis, she saw Ingram himself come out of a room, with a cigarette in his hand. He threw away the cigarette, and came forward to her, with amazement in his eyes.
“Where is Mr. Lavender? Has he gone into the smoking-room for me?” he asked.
“He is not here,” said Sheila. “I have come for you by myself.”
For a moment, too, Ingram felt the eyes of the men on him, but directly he said, with a fine air of carelessness, “Well, that is very good of you. Shall we go out for a stroll until your husband comes?”
So he opened the door and followed her outside into the fresh air and the roar of the waves.
“Well, Sheila,” he said, “this is very good of you, really; where is Mr. Lavender?”
“He generally rides with Mrs. Lorraine in the morning.”
“And what do you do?”
“I sit at the window.”