out loud. James with his coat-tails
to the fire was quite at his ease--and when Urquhart offered to drive
her down to Westgate for the half-term (which she herself mentioned),
it was James who said, "Capital! That will be jolly for you." "But
_you_ wouldn't come, would you?" "My child, it is that I _couldn't_
come. A motor in March! I should die. Besides," he added, "as you
know, I have to be at Brighton that Sunday." She had known it, and she
had known also that Brighton was an excuse. One of the bogies she kept
locked in a cupboard was James's _ennui_ when Lancelot was to the
fore. Could this too be jealousy!

"I'll tell you what I'll do," Jimmy Urquhart said. "The run down would
be rather jolly, but the run back in the dark might be a bore. The
Nugents have got a house at Sandwich. Why shouldn't you go there? You
know my sister Nugent, as they used to say."

"Yes, of course I do," Lucy said, "but I couldn't really--"

"But she is there, my dear ma'am. That's the point. I'll drop you
there on my way back. I wish I could stop too, but that's not
possible. She'll arrange it."

James thought it an excellent plan; but Lucy had qualms. Odd, that the
visit of Eros should a second time be succeeded by a motor-jaunt! To
go motoring, again, with a Mr. Urquhart--oh! But she owned that she
was absurd. James did not conceal his sarcasms. "She either fears her
fate too much..." he quoted at her. She pleaded with him.

"Darling," she said--and he was immensely complacent over that--"I
suppose it's a sign of old age, but-- After all, why shouldn't I go by
train--or in our own car, if it comes to that?"

"Firstly," said James through his eyeglass, "because Urquhart asks you
to go in his--a terror that destroyeth in the noonday compared to
ours; and secondly because, if you don't want it, I should rather like
to go to Brighton in mine."

"Oh," said she, "then you don't mind motoring in March!"

"Not in a closed car," said James--"and not to Brighton." This acted
as an extinguisher of the warmer feelings. Let Mr. Urquhart do his
worst then.

CHAPTER IX

SUNDRY ROMANTIC EPISODES

A little cloud of witness, assembled at will like seagulls out of the
blue inane, would come about her in after years. That madly
exhilarating rush to Westgate, for instance, on a keen March morning;
and that sudden question of hers to Urquhart, "What made you think of
asking me?" And his laconic answer, given without a turn of the head,