‘I say, how jolly!’ said Sarratt, coming up to look.  ’My wife, Sir William—­I think she told you—­has got a turn for this kind of thing.  These will give her ideas.’

And while he looked at the drawings, he slipped a hand into his wife’s arm, smiling down upon her, and commenting on the sketches.  There was nothing in what he said.  He only ‘knew what he liked,’ and an unfriendly bystander would have been amused by his constant assumption that Nelly’s sketches were as good as anybody’s.  Entirely modest for himself, he was inclined to be conceited for her, she checking him, with rather flushed cheeks.  But Farrell liked him all the better, both for the ignorance and the pride.  The two young people standing there together, so evidently absorbed in each other, yet on the brink of no ordinary parting, touched the romantic note in him.  He was very sorry for them—­especially for the bride—­and eagerly, impulsively wished to befriend them.

In the background, the stout lady whom the Sarratts had met on Loughrigg Terrace, Miss Hester Martin, was talking to Miss Farrell, while Bridget Cookson was carrying on conversation with a tall officer who carried his arm in a sling, and was apparently yet another convalescent officer from the Carton hospital, whom Cicely Farrell had brought over in her motor to tea at her brother’s cottage.  His name seemed to be Captain Marsworth, and he was doing his best with Bridget; but there were great gaps in their conversation, and Bridget resentfully thought him dull.  Also she perceived—­for she had extremely quick eyes in such matters—­that Captain Marsworth, while talking to her, seemed to be really watching Miss Farrell, and she at once jumped to the conclusion that there was something ‘up’ between him and Miss Farrell.

Cicely Farrell certainly took no notice of him.  She was sitting perched on the high end of a sofa smoking a cigarette and dangling her feet, which were encased, as before, in high-heeled shoes and immaculate gaiters.  She was dressed in white serge with a cap and jersey of the brightest possible green.  Her very open bodice showed a string of fine pearls and she wore pearl ear-rings.  Seen in the same room with Nelly Sarratt she could hardly be guessed at less than twenty-eight.  She was the mature woman in full possession of every feminine weapon, experienced, subtle, conscious, a little hard, a little malicious.  Nelly Sarratt beside her looked a child.  Miss Farrell had glanced at her with curiosity, but had not addressed many words to her.  She had concluded at once that it was a type that did not interest her.  It interested William of course, because he was professionally on the look out for beauty.  But that was his affair.  Miss Farrell had no use for anything so unfledged and immature.  And as for the sister, Miss Cookson, she had no points of attraction whatever.  The young man, the husband, was well enough—­apparently a gentleman; but Miss Farrell felt that she would have forgotten his existence when the tea-party was over.  So she had fallen back on conversation with her cousin.  That Cousin Hester—­dear, shapeless, Puritanical thing!—­disapproved of her, her dress, her smoking, her ways, and her opinions, Cicely well knew—­but that only gave zest to their meetings, which were not very frequent.