“He is not suffering,” Austen replied. “Perhaps—if it were not too much to ask—perhaps you might come to see him, sometime? I can think of nothing that would give him greater pleasure.”
“I will come—sometime,” she answered. “I am going away to-morrow, but—”
“Away?” he repeated, in dismay. Now that he was beside her, all unconsciously the dominating male spirit which was so strong in him, and which moves not woman alone, but the world, was asserting itself. For the moment he was the only man, and she the only woman, in the universe.
“I am going on a promised visit to a friend of mine.”
“For how long?” he demanded.
“I don't know, said Victoria, calmly; probably until she gets tired of me. And there,” she added, “are the stables, where no doubt you will find your faithful Pepper.”
They had come out upon an elevation above the hard service drive, and across it, below them, was the coach house with its clock-tower and weather-vane, and its two wings, enclosing a paved court where a whistling stable-boy was washing a carriage. Austen regarded this scene an instant, and glanced back at her profile. It was expressionless.
“Might I not linger—a few minutes?” he asked.
Her lips parted slightly in a smile, and she turned her head. How wonderfully, he thought, it was poised upon her shoulders.
“I haven't been very hospitable, have I?” she said. “But then, you seemed in such a hurry to go, didn't you? You were walking so fast when I met you that you quite frightened me.”