"Have you heard from him? He is coming to-day?"
"Yes, that's all right," replied Gerald hastily. "No more now; I hear her on the stairs."
Virginia came in. Happiness and returning health together had made her radiant. She wore to-day a pale mauve frock, and a hat trimmed with a garland of mauve and faint blue flowers. Like Mr. Bent on another occasion, Gerald found himself distracted with the wonder as to which of the two colours matched her eyes.
"What a day!" she said. "Oh, what a heavenly blue day, isn't it? Have you come to breakfast, Gerald? How nice!"
"Gerald is afraid he may be obliged to go back to town to-morrow," remarked her mother, as they sat down to table. "He wants to have one good day's motoring for the last, and as the driving does you so much good, I have arranged to stay with Pansy and leave you free to go with him."
"Tony and I! Oh, how splendid!" cried Virgie, sparkling. "I, too, must leave to-morrow, and I want to have a really delightful day for the last." She broke off a little abruptly, afraid lest what she said might be by implication uncomplimentary to her husband. Both her hearers remarked it, and they exchanged glances.
They did not say that Tony would not be going. Instead, Gerald produced a map from his pocket, and spread it on a corner of the table.
"I have more or less thought out a route," said he. "I wonder if you will approve. There were two places which you told me that you would particularly like to see--one was Bodiam Castle. The other was the Roman Pavement at Bignor. I have been talking to Baines (his chauffeur), and he says it would be quite possible to do both. It is a fifty-mile run to Bodiam--less than two hours. We could lunch on the way back--say at Lewes--and go on to Bignor, where we could have tea, and get back any time we like."
"How simply perfect!" laughed Virgie as she helped herself to marmalade with an appetite which was so recent an acquirement that she herself could not understand it. Nobody present noticed it. Mrs. Mynors would never have known had her daughter starved herself to death under her eyes. Across the girl's mind stole the thought of some one who had watched every mouthful, had hectored and bullied her into eating.