Dorothy's answer was precluded by another kiss. "It's so full of you that it can't be bothered to think of any one else," she declared plaintively, as she turned towards the door. Then she paused, fingering nervously a little heap of books which lay upon a table. "He—he isn't so very old, you know," she murmured softly before she made her escape.
When she was alone Mrs. Vandeleur sank into the chair which her daughter had just quitted, nestling among the cushions and knitting her brows in thought. The clock on the mantelpiece had struck twelve before she rose, and then she paused for an instant in front of the looking-glass, gazing into it half timidly before she extinguished the candles. The face which she saw there was manifestly pretty, in spite of the trouble which lurked in the tired eyes, and when she turned away, a hovering smile was struggling with the depression at the corners of the delicate, mobile lips.
IV
When Sir Geoffrey returned to Riverside, three days later, after a brief sojourn in London, spent for the most part at the office of his solicitor in Lincoln's Inn, he found Mrs. Vandeleur presiding over a solitary tea-table in a shady corner of the garden. A few chairs sociably disposed under the gnarled walnut-tree, and a corresponding number of empty tea-cups, suggested that her solitude had not been of long duration, and this impression was confirmed when Mrs. Vandeleur told her guest that if he had presented himself a short quarter of an hour earlier he would have been welcomed in a manner more worthy of his deserts.
Sir Geoffrey drew one of the low basket chairs up to the table,protesting,