And Clive was at her elbow, and distinctly heard her closing remarks—heard, but paid no heed to them—assuredly not the lover-like heed that might have been expected from a man just returned to his affianced bride after six months’ absence at the Cape.
“Juliet,” he said, as the girlfriends waved their farewells, and drove away, “tell me a little about your arrangements. How long do you stay here? Remember, I know nothing about anything. Your letters were always so short—”
“So short?” interrupted Juliet, making her eyes very round. “Why, I remember distinctly that the very last letter I sent you covered the whole of a sheet of notepaper!”
“Yes, and from its first to its last word was nothing but a description of a young lady’s dress that had excited your wrath at a fancy-dress ball. You did not answer any one of the questions I asked you.”
“That was her fault for wearing such a dress. It was pink chiffon over—”
“Oh, spare me, Juliet, I’ve had it once! Now will you answer my question? When do you return to town?”
But instead of answering him, Juliet fixed her eyes full on his face and said:
“How white and tired you look! What have you been doing with yourself?”
He gave a little forced laugh.
“Well, you know, a sea voyage isn’t always the most exhilarating thing in the world. One gets awfully bored sometimes, shut up from morning till night with the same set of people.”
“I couldn’t stand it for a week even. I should jump into the sea before I was out of sight of the land. Arthur Glynde has written some lovely verses about what he calls the ‘changeful, restless ocean’; but—”
Clive interrupted her impatiently.
“Never mind about what an incipient young poet has written, just tell me, Juliet, what I want to know. When do you go back to town?”
“Oh, but I do mind very much what this special incipient young poet writes, because he brings his verses to me at least twice a week, and reads them aloud. Yet we are friends!”
The last sentence was added in a seriocomic tone, with a marked emphasis on the conjunction.
Clive bit his lip.
“Once more, Juliet, will you—”
“Oh, don’t say it again,” interrupted the girl. “Well, father and Peggy intend returning tomorrow in time for a luncheon somewhere or other. Some of the servants return tonight, because, of course, Mrs. Glynde’s servants are here, and the house isn’t large, and—oh, by the way, wasn’t it kind of Mrs. Glynde to lend her house in this way for the wedding, and to leave her horses and carriages behind—oh!”—here she broke off abruptly, with a little start—“I have an idea, Clive. A lovely one!”
“Let’s have it. Something sensational of course?”
“Of course, or how could it be lovely? It’s just this. Father and Peggy have set their minds on a quiet early dinner tonight, and have made all their arrangements for returning tomorrow. Now, wouldn’t it be delightful to swoop down on them and insist—yes, insist—on going back tonight? Oh, the battle-royal there would be between me and Peggy! And I should be sure to carry the day. They’re both tired out limp as can be with the fuss of the wedding, and I feel as lively as a cricket and equal to anything.”
“I believe it! But if I were you I wouldn’t go out of my way to have battles-royal with Lady Culvers. They’ll come without any seeking, depend upon it. No, let your father have his dinner in peace tonight. There’s ever so much I want to talk to you about—no end of adventures to tell you. Let us go for a stroll in the orchard—that is the orchard over there, isn’t it?—and then we can talk without fear of interruption.”
But if he had no end of adventures to relate, assuredly she did not hear them that evening as they strolled in the golden haze of the slanting sunlight among the low-growing apple and pear-trees.
“Now I must be on my guard against compliments,” Juliet had said to herself as, side by side, they wandered along the narrow walks.
Her fears were needless. Compliments of the lover-like kind were evidently as far from his thoughts as adventures; for, from the time they swung back the orchard-gate till the clanging of the dressing-bell sent them back to the house, his talk was wholly and solely of one person, one thing—Ida, and her choice of a husband.
In fact, his conversation was simply a continuation of the one begun in the arbour in the early part of the afternoon. His questions were so many and so minute that Juliet at last threw back her head, held her chin very high in the air, and surveyed him with half-closed eyes, as she was in the habit of surveying her stepmother when catechised by her on matters which the wilful girl deemed outside parental jurisdiction.
“Really, Clive,” she said at length, “if you had Ida’s welfare so much at heart you should have managed to arrive a day or two sooner, and have cross-questioned her yourself as to Sefton’s character and the state of her feelings towards him. I can only repeat that Sefton seemed to me very delightful, and I don’t think Ida will ever feel dull with such a charming companion. I don’t know what you mean by being ‘devoted to him.’ She certainly was never enthusiastic in his praises. But then, as you know, Ida and I both take our love affairs calmly.”
While they had been talking, the sun had sunk behind a bank of apricot clouds, and the golden haze which had formed, so to speak, the atmosphere in which they had been walking, had changed in subtle mystic fashion to the silvery mist of twilight.
The clanging of the dressing-bell intercepted Clive’s reply.
With the sound of the bell came the crunch of carriage wheels along the gravelled drive.
“Visitors! How delightful!” cried Juliet. “Goodbye, after all, to the
