'But you are not forty, Will?' said Charlotte.
'My dear, I was thirty-nine last January.'
'Well, men about here are youths at that age. It was India used you up so, when you served in the line, was it not? I wish you had never gone there!'
'So do I,' said De Stancy drily. 'But I ought to grow a youth again, like the rest, now I am in my native air.'
They came to a narrow brook, not wider than a man's stride, and Miss De Stancy halted on the edge.
'Why, Lottie, you used to jump it easily enough,' said her brother. 'But we won't make her do it now.' He took her in his arms, and lifted her over, giving her a gratuitous ride for some additional yards, and saying, 'You are not a pound heavier, Lott, than you were at ten years old.... What do you think of the country here, Mr. Somerset? Are you going to stay long?'
'I think very well of it,' said Somerset. 'But I leave to-morrow morning, which makes it necessary that I turn back in a minute or two from walking with you.'
'That's a disappointment. I had hoped you were going to finish out the autumn with shooting. There's some, very fair, to be got here on reasonable terms, I've just heard.'
'But you need not hire any!' spoke up Charlotte. 'Paula would let you shoot anything, I am sure. She has not been here long enough to preserve much game, and the poachers had it all in Mr. Wilkins' time. But what there is you might kill with pleasure to her.'
'No, thank you,' said De Stancy grimly. 'I prefer to remain a stranger to Miss Power--Miss Steam-Power, she ought to be called--and to all her possessions.'
Charlotte was subdued, and did not insist further; while Somerset, before he could feel himself able to decide on the mood in which the gallant captain's joke at Paula's expense should be taken, wondered whether it were a married man or a bachelor who uttered it.
He had not been able to keep the question of De Stancy's domestic state out of his head from the first moment of seeing him. Assuming De Stancy to be a husband, he felt there might be some excuse for his remark; if unmarried, Somerset liked the satire still better; in such circumstances there was a relief in the thought that Captain De Stancy's prejudices might be infinitely stronger than those of his sister or father.
'Going to-morrow, did you say, Mr. Somerset?' asked Miss De Stancy. 'Then will you dine with us to-day? My father is anxious that you should do so before you go. I am sorry there will be only our own family present to meet you; but you can leave as early as you wish.'