"Out of town," he answered. "Did you miss me so much?"
"I did! There isn't a handy dinner man around, with you and Geoffrey both away. Dine with us this evening, will you?--it will be strictly _en famille_, for I want to talk business."
"Wants to talk business!" he thought, as, having accepted, he went on to the coupon department. "It has to do with that beggar Croyden, I reckon."
And when, the dinner over, they were sitting before the open grate fire, in the big living room, she broached the subject without timidity, or false pride.
"You are more familiar with Geoffrey Croyden's affairs than any one else, Colin," she said, crossing her knees, in the reckless fashion women have now-a-days, and exposing a ravishing expanse of blue silk stockings, with an unconscious consciousness that was delightfully naive. "And I want to ask you something--or rather, several things."
Macloud blew a whiff of cigarette smoke into the fire, and waited.
"I, naturally, don't ask you to violate any confidence," she went on, "but I fancy you may tell me this: was the particular business in which Geoffrey was engaged, when I saw him in Annapolis, a success or a failure?"
"Why do you ask!" Macloud said. "Did he tell you anything concerning it?"
"Only that his return to Northumberland would depend very much on the outcome."
"Well, it wasn't a success; in fact, it was a complete failure."
She laughed lightly. "I do not mean, where is he this minute, but where is he in general--where would you address a wire, or a letter, and know that it would be received?"
He threw his cigarette into the grate and lit another.
"Then, it is true--he is concealing himself."
"Not exactly--he is not proclaiming himself----"
"Not proclaiming himself or his whereabouts to his Northumberland friends, you mean?"
"Friends!" said Macloud. "Are there such things as friends, when one has been unfortunate?"
"I can answer only for myself," she replied earnestly.
"Then tell me this--is he in this country or abroad?"
"In this country," he said, after a pause.
"Is he in want,--I mean, in want for the things he has been used to?"
"He is not in want, I can assure you!--and much that he was used to having, he has no use for, now. Our wants are relative, you know."