Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/36

 might hear it, she talked about the beauty of the old house, and of the whole place and the country round. She had walked from Maud's, she said. She had wanted to walk, and Maud directed her so well that it would have been impossible to lose the way. "Only a mile and a half, and straight along, after the first turn. How lovely the Surrey lanes are! I didn't come out into the blazing sunlight once, till I'd got within six yards of your lodge, then into your shady avenue. I don't look very hot, do I?"

"You look just as you used to look when we rode together" he began, but she stopped him, laughing.

"Now!—It's my turn to cry 'nonsense,' and I won't beg your pardon, as you did mine. I was eighteen then—if there ever was such a time, which seems impossible—and now I'm thirty-one, looking every day of my age. Yes, of course we'll go into the house where I'm sure it's beautifully cool, and wait for Milly. Did you say you thought she wouldn't be long?"

"I suppose she will come home—soon," Sir Ian replied heavily.

"Maud says she's as devoted to good works as ever."

"Oh, yes, very devoted."

"She was always the most unselfish mortal."

"I—yes."

"I don't wonder a bit, you know, Sir Ian, that you