Page:Leon Wilson - Ruggles of Red Gap.djvu/375

Rh Belknap-Jackson on this occasion drove his car with the greatest solicitude, proceeding more slowly than I had ever known him do. As I attended to certain luggage details at the station he was regretting to his lordship that they had not had a longer time at the country club the day it was exhibited.

"Look a bit after silly old George," said his lordship to me at parting. "Chap's dotty, I dare say. Talking about a plantation of apple trees now. For his old age—that sort of thing. Be something new in a fortnight, though. Like him, of course, course!"

Her ladyship closed upon my hand with a remarkable vigour of grip.

"We owe it all to you," she said, again with dancing eyes. Then her eyes steadied queerly. "Maybe you won't be sorry."

"Know I shan't." I fancy I rather growled it, stupidly feeling I was not rising to the occasion. "Knew his lordship wouldn't rest till he had you where he wanted you. Glad he's got you." And curiously I felt a bit of a glad little squeeze in my throat for her. I groped for something light—something American.

"You are some Countess," I at last added in a silly way.

"What, what!" said his lordship, but I had caught her eyes. They brimmed with understanding.

With the going of that train all life seemed to go. I mean to say, things all at once became flat. I turned to the dull station.

"Give you a lift, old chap," said Belknap-Jackson. Again he was cordial. So firmly had I kept the reins of the