"But you surely don't intend—you surely will not—"
"I shall act as I think proper, and without any sentimental advice from you," he declared with a mock bow, but straightening himself instantly when at the door was heard a fumbling, and the gray-bearded man in blue spectacles, his thin white hand groping before him, slowly entered the room.
CHAPTER XIV
CONCERNS THE CURSE OF THE CARDINAL
Gabrielle and Walter were seated together under one of the big oaks at the edge of the tennis-lawn at Connachan. With May Spencer and Lady Murie they had been playing; but his mother and the young girl had gone into the house for tea, leaving the lovers alone.
"What's the matter with you to-day, darling?" he had asked as soon as they were out of hearing. "You don't seem yourself, somehow."
She started quickly, and, pulling herself up, tried to smile, assuring him that there was really nothing amiss.
"I do wish you'd tell me what it is that's troubling you so," he said. "Ever since I returned from abroad you've not been yourself. It's no use denying it, you know."
"I haven't felt well, perhaps. I think it must be the weather," she assured him.
But he, viewing the facts in the light of what he had noticed at their almost daily clandestine meetings, knew that she was concealing something from him.