"I ordered that," said Gheena, getting up, "and my horses shall not cat black oats, Dearest, even if the heat has upset you."
"The heat?" said George Freyne, glaring at the blurred atmosphere outside.
"And I'm going down to see Hennessy. He is sure to be at tea with Anne," said Gheena, going out. "He got that oats for me."
The hoot of a motor-horn roused Dearest George from sombre chewing of bitter mental cud.
Darby Dillon took his car round to the shelter of the archway and then let himself in.
He came lumping across the polished hall and into the hot drawing-room.
George Freyne stared at him and grunted before he burst into the song of his grievances, which were tea, sugar, oats, and two women without mental balance.
"We had to come home from the meet," said Darby, having duly listened without comment. "Too wild to keep hounds out and no one there but ourselves.--I'm not listening! But I was, George. But a man may do what he likes with his own, mayn't he? And Gheena is an heiress. It will all be hers."
"Except a thousand a year and a cave," burst out George Freyne--"a sea cave on the shore."
"Don't make short cuts to it, then," said Darby gravely.
Gheena, her colour still high, returned, Crabbit at her heels.
"I've sent the car to ask Mrs. Weston to tea," she said. "Dillon can drive, and it will mean Mr. Keefe also, no doubt."
"And Stafford," said Darby. "He's the latest."
"Why he stays on here," she burst out--"as if drains mattered. A nice thing if the Germans found them ready just to make their potato grounds good for them."
Darby held his hands to the blaze, as he said quietly that all men knew their own affairs best.
"The man may have something wrong with him," he said. "Heart disease or heaven knows what!"
"A man who rides and shoots," said Gheena contemptuously. "I have my eye----" Then she stopped abruptly.
Dearest George, feeling himself neglected, remarked that he would not have the car sent on futile errands. It was a dear car, and just because it was a wet day, and to send it with a man who might be able to drive, or might be in the bay by noon under water, car and all. He appealed to his wife, who came in unperturbed by bad weather, her curiously fresh comeliness outlined in girlish blue.