Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/20

 just in time to arrive by a quarter-past four? You can motor in ten or fifteen minutes."

"No, thank you very much, I can't give up the walk," said Millicent, slowly and rather thoughtfully. "I think we must start early and take plenty of time."

"I'm almost sorry I told you about Maud and Terry Ricardo," said Mrs. Forestier. "But as Maud mentioned her idea to me, she might think it spiteful if I were the one to make you miss her and her cousin."

"If the call was to be a surprise, she couldn't have blamed us for being out," said Sir Ian. He was a very hospitable man, yet he spoke as if he would not be sorry for an excuse to miss the visitors.

"She would blame us, though," said Millicent, "for she would ask where we were; and when she heard we'd been lunching here, she'd be sure to think Nina had told us, and that we'd stopped out late simply because we didn't care about seeing them."

"Who would tell her?" asked Sir Ian. "Not one of the footmen."

"She would very likely ask to see Miss Verney."

"By the way, Miss Verney didn't once come over here while you were gone," said Mrs. Forestier, "though I begged her to drop in any day, or every day, to tea, thinking she might be lonely."

"Nora isn't the sort of girl to be lonely, while she has the run of the library," remarked Sir Ian. "Still, I wonder she didn't come over."