Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/72

 been, I've had lots of time to rest. How good that you've got over your headache, dear."

"It always flies away at sunset, if I rest. But I was disappointed not to go with you this afternoon. Do tell me what happened."

"Nothing happened," said Terry, after an instant's pause. She bent over a great bank of pink and white roses, heaped into a bowl. "Friars' Moat is a beautiful old house—so quaint and interesting, though not huge. I like it all the better for that. Milly didn't come home. Something must have kept her. They'd been lunching with Mrs. Forestier at Riding Wood House. Sir Ian seemed to think that Milly might probably have gone to the village to visit some of her numerous protégés."

"Oh! So you didn't see her?"

"No. But I daresay she'll be over here soon."

"Norman says you and she were the most tremendous friends, when you were a young girl. And Nina Forestier, who knew Milly ages ago, says so, too."

"So we were. Milly was very good to me. I loved her dearly. But you see I went out to India when I was eighteen, and all my real life has been lived there. We wrote to each other often at first, of course; but you know how difficult it is to keep up a correspondence, as years go on, between two people so far separated—whose interests are separated, too."

"I don't know. I love writing letters. I've always