Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 2.djvu/67

Rh Rose, at this, could be amazed with superiority. "What?—you've already been here?"

"An hour ago," said Dennis. "I asked Mrs. Beever not to tell you."

That was a chance for positive criticism. "She obeyed your request to the letter. But why in the world such portentous secrecy?" Rose spoke as if there was no shade of a reason for his feeling shy, and now gave him an excellent example of the right tone. She had emulated Tony's own gesture of welcome, and he said to himself that no young woman could have stretched a more elastic arm across a desert of four cold years.

"I can explain to you better," Dennis replied, "why I emerged than why I vanished."

"You emerged, I suppose, because you wanted to see me." Rose spoke to one of her admirers, but she looked, she even laughed, at the other, showing him by this time an aspect completely and inscrutably renewed. "You knew I was here?"

"At Wilverley?" Dennis hesitated. "I took it for granted."

"I'm afraid it was really for Miss Armiger you came," Tony remarked in the spirit of pleasantry.