“Yes,” she said. “I should have thought I must seem rather young and foolish.”
“Lord, I don’t mean that!” he exclaimed. “I mean that I must seem a pretty uninteresting bit of elderly shoe-leather.”
“Uninteresting? Oh no!” she cried in protest, and then checked herself and her colour rose a little.
He smiled humorously.
“I can’t see you out of this glass eye unless I turn round, so whether you’re pulling my leg or not I don’t know, but I was just saying to old Simon that the only kind of lady likely to take an interest in me was a female collector of antique curiosities, and you don’t seem that sort, Miss Farmond.”
She said nothing for a moment, and then asked:
“Were you discussing ladies then with Mr. Rattar?”
He also paused for a moment before replying.
“Incidentally in the course of a gossip, as the old chap hadn’t got my business ready for me. By the way, did you get much change out of him?”
She shook her head a little mournfully.
“Nothing at all. He just asked questions instead of answering them.”
“So he did with me! Confound the man. I fancy he has made too much money and is beginning to take it easy. That’s one advantage of not being too rich, Miss Farmond; it keeps you from waxing fat.”
“I’m not likely to wax fat then!” she laughed, and yet it was not quite a cheerful laugh.
He turned quickly and looked at her sympathetically.
“That your trouble?” he enquired in his outspoken way.
Cicely was not by way of giving her confidences easily, but this straightforward, friendly attack penetrated her reserve.
“It makes one so dependent,” she said, her voice even lower than usual.
“That must be the devil,” he admitted.
“It is!” said she.
He whipped up the mare and ruminated in silence. Then he remarked:
“I’m just wondering.”
Cicely began to smile.
“Wondering what?”
“What the devil there can be that isn’t utterly uninteresting about me—assuming you weren’t pulling my leg.”
“Oh,” she said, “no man can be uninteresting who has seen as much and done as much as you have.”
“The Lord keep you of that opinion!” he said, half humorously, but only half, it seemed. “It’s true I’ve knocked about and been knocked about, but I’d have thought you’d have judged more by results.”
She laughed a little low laugh.
“Do you think yourself the results are very bad?”
“Judging by the mirror, beastly! Judging by other standards—well, one can’t see one’s self in one’s full naked horror, thank Heaven for it too! But I’m not well read, and I’m not—but what’s the good in telling you? You’re clever enough to see for yourself.”
For a man who had no intention of paying compliments, Ned Cromarty had a singular gift for administering the pleasantest—because it was so evidently the most genuine—form of flattery. In fact, had he but known it, he was a universal favourite with women, whenever he happened to meet them; only he had not the least suspicion of the fact—which made him all the more favoured.
“I don’t know very many men,” said Cicely, with her serious expression and a conscientious air, “and so perhaps I am not a good judge, but certainly you seem to me quite unlike all the others.”
“I told you,” he laughed, “that the female would have to be a bit of a collector.”
“Oh,” she cried, quite serious still, “I don’t mean that in the least. I don’t like freaks a bit myself. I only mean—well, people do differ in character and experience, don’t they?”
“I guess you’re pretty wise,” said he simply. “And I’m sized up right enough. However, the trouble at present is this blamed mare goes too fast!”
On their left, the chimneys and roof of a large mansion showed through the surrounding trees. In this windswept seaboard country, its acres of plantation were a conspicuous landmark and marked it as the seat of some outstanding local magnate. These trees were carried down to the road in a narrow belt enclosing an avenue that ended in a lodge and gates. At the same time that the lodge came into view round a bend in the road, a man on a bicycle appeared ahead of them, going in the same direction, and bent over his handlebars against the wind.
“Hullo, that’s surely Malcolm Cromarty!” said Ned.
“So it is!” she exclaimed, and there was a note of surprise in her voice. “I wonder where he has been.”
The cyclist dismounted at the lodge gates a few moments before the trap pulled up there too, and the young man turned and greeted them. Or rather he greeted Miss Farmond, for his smile was clearly aimed at her alone.
“Hullo! Where have you been?” he cried.
“Where have you?” she retorted as she jumped out and let him help her off with the driving coat.
They made a remarkably good-looking young couple standing together there on the road and their manner to one another was evidently that of two people who knew each other well. Sitting on his high driving seat, Ned Cromarty turned his head well round so as to bring his sound eye to bear and looked at them in silence. When she handed him his coat and thanked him afresh, he merely laughed, told her, in his outspoken way, that all the fun had been his, and whipped up his mare.
“That’s more the sort of fellow!” he said to himself gloomily, and for a little the thought seemed to keep him depressed. And then as he let the recollections of their drive have their own way undisturbed, he began to smile again, and kept smiling most of the way home.
The road drew ever nearer to the sea, trees and hedgerows grew even rarer and more stunted, and then he was driving through a patch of planting hardly higher than a shrubbery up to an ancient building on the very brink of the cliffs.
