The man answered, "No, ma'am, not that I understood. Mr. Pavely didn't come himself to the telephone."
"What was the message exactly?" Laura was always kind and courteous in her manner to her servants, and they were all attached to her.
"It was as how Mr. Pavely was being detained, and could not be home last night, ma'am. The person who gave the message was in a great hurry—he cut me off before I could say anything to him."
"I suppose we ought to have telephoned to the Bank early this morning," said Laura thoughtfully. But it had never occurred to her that it would be necessary for her to do so. Her husband was a very exact man of business. She had taken it as certain that he had also communicated with the Bank.
"Who was it telephoned just now?" she asked.
"I think it was Mr. Privet himself, ma'am. He said he felt sure Mr. Pavely intended to be back this morning, because of the gentleman he had arranged to see."
"Perhaps I had better speak to Mr. Privet myself," said Laura. "Is that you, Mr. Privet?"
"I wish you a very good morning, Mrs. Pavely. I didn't mean to put you to any trouble, but you see the matter is important——" Even through the telephone she could hear a mysterious tone in the old voice, though he was speaking in so low a tone that she could scarcely hear. "It's Lord St. Amant. He's been here since ten o'clock, and he says he can't stop any longer. Mr. Pavely made an appointment with his lordship over a week ago. It's very strange he should have forgotten, isn't it, Mrs. Pavely?"
"Yes, I think it is strange," she said slowly. "Will you tell his lordship that I'm exceedingly sorry that word was not sent him. If I had known of the appointment, of course I would have communicated with him either by telephone or by a note."
"Then I'm to put off all Mr. Pavely's appointments for to-day?"
"Well, yes, Mr. Privet, that seems to me the only thing you can do."
Laura smiled a little as she left the telephone. Mr. Privet's tone, if not his words, made it quite clear that he thought Mr. Pavely had committed a serious solecism, almost the worst solecism a country banker could commit, in not keeping an appointment with the great man of the neighbourhood, who was to be the new Lord Lieutenant of the county.
An hour and a half later, as mother and child were riding slowly home, Laura suddenly told herself that it was a long time since Mrs. Tropenell had seen Alice on pony-back. Why shouldn't they both go on to Freshley? And if Aunt Letty asked them to stay to lunch, as she very probably would, so much the better!
On their way to the front door of the house, they turned into the stable-yard to find a groom, and then, suddenly, Laura felt a queer, and to herself an utterly unexpected and new, sensation sweep over her. It was a sensation of eager, unreasoning joy.
Oliver Tropenell stood in the middle of the yard, talking to his mother's old groom. He looked ill and tired—dreadfully tired. But all at once, as he saw Laura and her child come riding in, a wonderful change swept over his dark face—there came over it a glowing expression of welcome and delight. He lifted Alice off her pony. Then he came forward to help Laura....
With a shock of surprise which seemed to make her heart stop beating, Laura felt her whole being responding to the ardent, and at once imperious and imploring look with which he gazed up into her eyes. She was shaken, awed by the passion he threw, perhaps unconsciously, into that long, beckoning look—stirred to the heart by the feeling of content his mere presence brought her.
But even in those few flashing moments, Laura Pavely quickly, almost fiercely, assured herself that this new, strange sensation of oneness, of surrender on her part, was "friendship," nothing more.
Yet her voice faltered in spite of herself, as she said, "Hadn't we better ride round? I only came in here to find some one to hold the horses, in case your mother wanted us to come in."
But with a muttered, "Mother has got Lord St. Amant to luncheon—I know she would like you both to stay, too," he lifted her off her horse.
They walked to a door which led into the back part of the house, and so by a corridor to a small room where Mrs. Tropenell generally sat in the morning. As they went along, Alice, alone, chattered happily.
At last Laura, more for the sake of proving to herself that she felt quite at ease than for anything else, asked suddenly, "I suppose you didn't see Godfrey on your way through London?"
Oliver waited a few moments—so long indeed that she wondered if he had heard her. But she knew in her heart that he had, for his face had darkened at the mention of her husband's name. At last he answered, very deliberately, "Is Godfrey away then?"
"Yes. He went off some days ago. We expected him home yesterday; but he sent a telephone message to say he wasn't coming back till to-night."
They were now before the door of Mrs. Tropenell's sitting-room. Her son opened it quietly, and for a moment the three stood there, gazing into the panelled, sunlit little room, which was part of the survival of a much older building than the eighteenth-century manor-house.
Mrs. Tropenell, sitting upright in a low chair, was looking up into the face of the man who stood before her, and they were both so absorbed in what they were saying that neither had heard the door open.
Laura gazed with new eyes, a new curiosity, at Lord St. Amant. She had seen him often in this house, though sometimes at comparatively long intervals, ever since she was a child, and always he had had a fixed place, in her mind and imagination, as Mrs. Tropenell's one man-friend.
To-day, seeing the two thus talking eagerly together she felt her interest oddly quickened. She was asking herself eagerly whether some such passage as that which had taken place between herself and Oliver Tropenell three months ago, and which had caused her so much pain, had ever occurred between those two in the days when Lady St. Amant, a fretful, selfish invalid whom every one disliked, was still alive. If yes, then Mrs. Tropenell had evidently known how to retain the friendship, the warm affections of a man who, younger, had been notoriously inconstant.
In Laura's eyes these two had always been old when she thought of them at all. But to-day she realised, as in a flash, that the man and woman before her had also been young, and that not so very long ago.
Even now, Lord St. Amant was a still vigorous and active-looking man. He was leaning over the back of a chair, looking eagerly into his old friend's face. Was it true, as some of the gossips said, that he had remained a widower for that same friend's sake?
Laura gazed at him with an almost hungry curiosity. She was absurdly surprised that he looked to-day exactly as he had always looked in her eyes—a pleasant, agreeable-mannered, amusing man of the world, not at all her notion of the one-time lover of many women.
Lord St. Amant's hair had now gone white, but, apart from that he looked just as he had been wont to look, when he came and went about Freshley Manor, when she, as a child, had stayed there with her mother. Some years later, she had become dimly aware—girls always know such things—that Mrs. Tropenell had had a fleeting notion of marrying her to Lord St. Amant. But Laura had also known that it was Mrs. Tropenell, not herself, who was the magnet which then drew him so often to Freshley Manor.
They had once, however, had an intimate talk together. It had been on one of the very rare occasions when Mrs. Tropenell was ill, confined to bed, upstairs, and she, Laura Baynton, had been left alone to entertain her Aunt Letty's old friend. And their talk—she remembered it now—had been all of Oliver: of Oliver and his mother.
Lord St. Amant had spoken with much heat of Oliver's having settled on the other side of the world, leaving Mrs. Tropenell lonely. Then he had smiled a curious little smile: "But that makes no difference. To a mother 'distance makes the heart grow fonder,' and also 'lends enchantment to the view.' An only son, Laura, is the most formidable of rivals."
The girl had been flattered, touched too, by the implied confidence.
She had yet another vivid memory of Lord St. Amant. He had sent her, immediately on hearing of her engagement to Godfrey Pavely, a magnificent wedding