"The whole world is welcome to hear it. I'd advertise it in the Times if it would do any good."
"I believe you are impudent," laughed the beauty.
"I know I'm imprudent."
"Oh!" She carefully dropped her leader in the riffles. "There's no law keeping you in this neighborhood, you know. Try India for a change."
"There's nothing to keep the trout on the line--except the hook."
Her smile told of lazy but amiable derision. "It's a great pity about you."
"Awf'ly glad you feel so. Some poet chap said that pity is akin to love."
"I think it would do you good to take a long walk, Mr. Verinder."
"With Miss Seldon?" he wanted to know cautiously.
"Alone," she told him severely. "It would be a rest."
"A rest for me--or for you?"
The dimples flashed into her soft cheeks again. "For both of us, perhaps."
"Thanks. It's rather jolly here." He put his hands in his trousers pockets and leaned against a tree.
"Hope you'll enjoy it. I'm going to find Moya." Miss Seldon reeled up, put her rod against the tree, and sauntered off with the lissom grace that was hers.
Verinder woke up. "Let me come too. On second thoughts I find I do need a walk."
She looked back at him saucily over her shoulder. "You may come if you won't talk until you're spoken to."
"Done, by Jove!"
They followed the trail a stone's throw in silence.
"Miss Dwight's always going off by herself. Seems to me she's a bit off her feed," Verinder suggested.
Joyce was amused. For a man who wanted it understood that only one girl in the world mattered to him he still appeared to take a good deal of interest in Moya.
"Seems dreamy and--er--depressed. What!" he continued.
"Perhaps she is in love," Joyce let herself suggest wickedly.
"I've thought of that, but 'pon my word! I can't think of a man."
"Why not Mr. Verinder?"
His eyeglass ogled her to make sure he was not being made game of, but the lovely face was very innocent.
"Can't be," he demurred with conventional denial.
"Captain Kilmeny, then."
"Hardly. I don't think he's quite her style of man."
"Perhaps with his cousin, the highwayman."
"Good heavens, no!"
She took on a look of horrified suspicion. "You don't think--surely it couldn't be--Oh, I do hope it isn't Lord Farquhar."
He stared at her through his monocle with his mouth open, then discovered that he had been sold as the laughter rippled into her face.
"Oh, I say! Jolly good one, that. Lord Farquhar, by Jove!" Yet his laughter rang flat. It always made him angry to find that they were "spoofing" him. He didn't like to be "got" in the beastly traps these girls were always laying for him.