Nell dropped the paper and struggled with a portentous yawn.
"Thank you very much, Miss Lorton," said Mr. Vernon politely, with a
half smile on his impassive face. "It is, as Mrs. Lorton says, very
interesting."
Nell stared at him; then, seeing the irony in his eyes and on his lips,
smiled.
"I thought for the moment that you meant it," she said quietly.
Mrs. Lorton heard, and sniffed at her.
"My dear Eleanor, what do you mean?" she inquired stiffly. "Of course,
Mr. Vernon is interested. Why should he say so if he were not? I'm
afraid, Eleanor, that you are of opinion that nothing but fiction has
any claim on our attention, and that anything real and true is of no
account. I may be old-fashioned and singular, but I find that these
small details of the lives of our aristocracy are full of interest, not
to say edifying. What do you think, Mr. Vernon?"
He had been gazing absently out of the window, but he pulled himself
together, and came up to the scratch with a jerk.
"Certainly, certainly," he said.
Mrs. Lorton smiled triumphantly.
"You see, Eleanor, Mr. Vernon quite agrees with me. I must go and see if
Molly has put the jelly in the window to cool. Meanwhile, Mr. Vernon may
like you to continue reading to him."
Mr. Vernon rose to open the door for her--Nell noticed the act of
courtesy--then sank down again.
"You don't want any more?" she said, looking at the paper on her knee.
"No, thanks," he said.
She tossed it onto a chair at the other end of the room.
"It is the most awful nonsense," she said, with a girlish frankness.
"Why did you tell mamma that it was interesting?"
He met the direct gaze of the clear gray eyes, and smiled.
"Well--as it happened--it was," he said.
The clear gray eyes opened wider.
"What! All this gossip about the Earl of Angleford, and his nephew, Lord
Selbie?"
He looked down, then raised his eyes, narrowed into slits, and fixed
them above her head.
"I fancy it's true--in the main," he said, half apologetically.
"Well, and if it is," she retorted impatiently, "of what interest can it
be to us? We don't know the Earl of Angleford, and don't care a button
that he is married, and that his nephew is--what do you
say?--disinherited."
"N-o," he admitted.
"Very well, then," she said triumphantly. "It is like reading the doings
of people living in the moon."