Moreover, Gwen's was not an inquiry-question demanding an answer. It was interrogative chat. She was thinking all the while how amused Adrian would have been with Dave's letter and the escaped prisoner. Then her thought was derailed by one of the sudden jerks that crossed the line so often in these days. Chat with herself must needs turn on the mistakes she had made in not borrowing that letter to enclose with her next one to Adrian, for him to ... to what? There came the jerk! What could he see? Indeed, one of the sorest trials of this separation from him was the way her correspondence—for she had insisted on freedom in this respect—was handicapped by his inability to read it. How could she allow all she longed to say to pass under the eyes even of Irene, dear friend though she had become? She would have given worlds for an automaton that could read aloud, whose speech would repeat all its eyes saw, without passing the meaning of it through an impertinent mind.
Sister Nora was quite in her confidence about her love-affair; in fact, she had seen Adrian for a moment, her arrival at the Towers on her way from Scotland after her father's death having overlapped his departure—which had been delayed a few days by pretexts of a shallow nature—just long enough to admit of the introduction. She inclined to partisanship with the Countess. Why—see how mad the whole thing was! The girl had fancied herself in love with him after seeing him barely once, for five minutes. It never could last. She was, however, quite prepared to back Gwen if it did show signs of being, or becoming, a grande passion. Meanwhile, evidently the kindest thing was to turn her mind in another direction, and the inoculation of an Earl's daughter with the virus of an enthusiasm which has been since called slumming presented itself to her in the light of an effort-worthy end. Sister Nora was far ahead of her time; it should have fallen twenty years later.
But she was not going to imperil her chances of success by using too strong a virus at the first injection. Caution was everything. This projected visit to Sapps Court was a perfect stepping-stone to a stronger regimen, such as an incursion into the purlieus of Drury Lane. Tom-all-alone's might overtax the nervous system of a neophyte. The full-blown horrors which civilisation creates wholesale, and remedies retail, were not to be grappled with by untrained hands. A time might come for that; meanwhile—Sapps Court, clearly!
The two ladies had a quiet drive back to the Towers. How very quiet the latter end of a drive often is, as far as talk goes! Does the Ozymandian silence on the box react upon the rank and file of the expedition, or is it the hypnotic effect of hoof-monotony? Lady Gwen and Miss Grahame scarcely exchanged a word until, within a mile of the house, they identified two pedestrians. Of whom their conversation was precisely what follows, not one word more or less:—
"There they are, Cousin Chloe, exactly as I prophesied."
"Well—why shouldn't they be?"
"I didn't say anything about shoulds and shouldn't. I merely referred to facts.... Come—say you think it ridiculous!"
"I can't see why. Their demeanour appears to me unexceptionable, and perfectly dignified. Everything one would expect, knowing the parties...."
"Are they going to walk about like that to all eternity, being unexceptionable? That's what I want to know?"
"You are too impatient, dear!"