"I wonder what those who have gone to church will say when they discover that we have spent all the morning here?"
"They may say what they like," he made answer, promptly. "There are things one cannot speak about in drawing-rooms, among a crowd. And how could I ever have imagined that you, with your high spirits and merry temperament, and perpetual good-humour, had come through such trials? I wonder that people never think of the mischief that is done by intermeddling——"
"Intermeddling?" said she proudly. "It wasn't of intermeddling I had to complain: it was a downright conspiracy—it was false stories—I was deceived by those who professed to be my best friends. There is intermeddling and intermeddling. You might say I was intermeddling in the case of my nephew. But what harm can come of that? It is not lies, it is the truth, I want to have told him. And even if it causes him some pain, it will be for his good. Don't you think I am right?"
He hesitated.
"I hope so," he said. "But you know things wear such a different complexion according to the way you look at them——"
"But facts, Lord Musselburgh, facts," she persisted. "Do you think a man like George Morris would be affected by any sentimental considerations one way or the other? Won't he find out just the truth? And that is all I honestly want Vin to know—the actual truth: then let him go on with his eyes open if he chooses. Facts, Lord Musselburgh: who can object to facts?" Then she said—as she gave him her hand that he might assist her to rise—
"We must be thinking of getting back home now, for if we are late for lunch, those Drexel girls will be grinning at each other like a couple of fiends."
Rather reluctantly he rose also, and accompanied her. They made their way across a series of rough, bracken-covered knolls projecting into the sea until they reached the little bay that is known as Port Bân; and here, either the beauty and solitude of the place tempted them, or they were determined to defy sarcasm, for instead of hastening home, they quietly strolled up and down the smooth cream-white beach, now and again picking up a piece of rose-red seaweed, or turning over a limpet-shell, or watching a sandpiper making his quick little runs alongside the clear, crisp-curling ripples. They did not speak; they were as silent as the transparent blue shadows that their figures cast on the soft-yielding surface on which they walked. And sometimes Lord Musselburgh seemed inclined to write something, with the point of his stick, on that flawless sand; and then again he desisted; and still they continued silent.
She took up a piece of pink seaweed, and began pulling it to shreds. He was standing by, looking on.
"Don't you think," said he at last, "that there should be a good deal of sympathy—a very unusual sympathy—between two people who have come through the same suffering?"