“Forgive me!” he exclaimed, raising his panama hat, bowing as though she were an entire stranger, and yet laughing the while. “I had no intention of giving offence. Envy is permitted, however—is it not?”
“Oh, it hasn’t given me offence at all?” she laughed frankly. “You see, there’s no truth in the rumour, therefore I can afford to laugh.”
Her words struck him as very strange. They seemed to convey that if the engagement were really a fact it would cause her regret and annoyance.
“I wanted to meet Dubard so much,” he remarked in a tone of regret. “I suppose there is no chance he will return to Orton?”
“Not this summer, I think. He left us to go direct to Paris, and then I believe he goes to his estate in the Pyrenees.”
“But he came here intending to spend a week or so at Orton, did he not?”
“Yes; but he received a letter recalling him to France,” she said. “Father says he didn’t receive any letter. If he really didn’t, he surely could have left without telling us a lie.”
Macbean smiled. How little she knew of the real character of Jules Dubard, the plausible élégant who was such a prominent character at the Jockey Club and in the Bois.
“Very soon,” she added, in a tone of regret, “we shall have to return. My father is due back at the Ministry on the fourth of next month, and while he is there we shall go up to San Donato, our villa above Florence, and stay for the vintage, which, to me, is the best time in Italy in all the year.”
“Ah yes,” he sighed. “I have always heard so. Myself I love Italy—I only wish I could escape from this country with its long dismal winters and live in sunshine always.”