“I fancied that you were happy here without going to see an old woman who after all has not much amusement to offer to you.”

“I don’t want any amusement.”

“At any rate you will answer Lady Ushant?”

“Of course I shall answer her.”

“Perhaps you can let me know.  She wishes me to take you to Cheltenham.  I shall go for a couple of days, but I shall not stay longer.  If you are going perhaps you would allow me to travel with you.”

“Of course it would be very kind; but I don’t suppose that I shall go.  I am sure Lady Ushant won’t believe that I am kept away from her by any pleasure of my own here.  I can explain it all to her and she will understand me.”  She hardly meant to reproach him.  She did not mean to assume an intimacy sufficient for reproach.  But he felt that she had reproached him.  “I love Lady Ushant so dearly that I would go anywhere to see her if I could.”

“Then I think it could be managed.  Your father——­”

“Papa does not attend much to us girls.  It is mamma that manages all that.  At any rate, I will write to Lady Ushant, and will ask papa to let you know”

Then it seemed as though there were nothing else for him but to go;—­and yet he wanted to say some other word.  If he had been cruel in throwing Mr. Twentyman in her teeth, surely he ought to apologize.  “I did not mean to say anything to offend you.”

“You have not offended me at all, Mr. Morton.”

“If I did think that,—­that——­”

“It does not signify in the least.  I only want Lady Ushant to understand that if I could possibly go to her I would rather do that than anything else in the world.  Because Lady Ushant is kind to me I needn’t expect other people to be so.”  Reginald Morton was of course the “other people.”

Then he paused a moment.  “I did so long,” he said, “to walk round the old place with you the other day before these people came there, and I was so disappointed when you would not come with me.”

“I was coming.”

“But you went back with—­that other man”

“Of course I did when you showed so plainly that you didn’t want him to join you.  What was I to do?  I couldn’t send him away.  Mr. Twentyman is a very intimate friend of ours, and very kind to Dolly and Kate.”

“I wished so much to talk to you about the old days.”

“And I wish to go for your aunt, Mr. Morton; but we can’t all of us have what we wish.  Of course I saw that you were very angry, but I couldn’t help that.  Perhaps it was wrong in Mr. Twentyman to offer to walk with you.”

“I didn’t say so at all.”

“You looked it at any rate, Mr. Morton.  And as Mr. Twentyman is a friend of ours—­”

“You were angry with me.”

“I don’t say that.  But as you were too grand for our friend of course you were too grand for us.”

“That is a very unkind way of putting it.  I don’t think I am grand.  A man may wish to have a little conversation with a very old friend without being interrupted, and yet not be grand.  I dare say Mr. Twentyman is just as good as I am.”