A sudden change had passed over Beryl. She knew this man Ashwicke, her attitude towards him was that of fear. The looks they had exchanged at first meeting were sufficient to convince me that there was some hidden secret between them.
“Nora cannot be aware of your arrival,” Beryl said, as we walked together up the sunny drive to the house. “Otherwise she would either have told me, or she certainly would have remained at home to receive you.”
“Why should she?” he laughed lightly. “Surely we are old enough friends to put aside all ceremony. I’m a rolling stone, as you know, and I hate putting people out.”
“Yes,” she said; “you are a rolling stone, and no mistake. I don’t think any one travels further afield than you do. You seem to be always travelling.”
“I’ve only spent six months in England these last eight years,” he responded. “To me, England is only bearable in August or September. A little shooting, and I’m off again.”
“You only come back because you can’t get decent sport on the Continent?” I said, for want of other observation to make.
“Exactly,” he answered. ”‘La Chasse,’ as the French call it, is never a success across the Channel. Some rich Frenchman started a fox-hunt down at Montigny, in the Seine and Marne, not long ago, and part of the paraphernalia was an ambulance wagon flying the red-cross flag. A fact! I went to the first meet myself.”
“The French are no sportsmen,” I said.
“The same everywhere, all over the Continent. Sport is chic, therefore the get-up of sportsmen must be outrageous and striking. No foreigner enjoys it. He shoots or hunts just because it’s the correct thing to do. Here in England one kills game for the love of the thing. To the Frenchman in patent leather, sport is only a bore.”
He had all the irresponsible air of the true cosmopolitan, yet his assertion that he had been absent from England a year was an unmitigated lie. Knowing this, I was doubtful of all his chatter.