ke, eagerly.

"No, no, Duke. You must not leave the table. I will send a servant."

"I will fetch her here in half the time that any servant will. Poor
Marian, why shouldnt she have her lunch? I shall be back in a jiffy."

"What a restless, extraordinary creature he is!" said Lady Carbury,
displeased, as Marmaduke hastily left the room. "The idea of a man
leaving the table in that way!"

"I suspect he has his reasons," said Elinor.

"I think it is a perfectly natural thing for him to do," said Constance,
pettishly. "I see nothing extraordinary in it."

Marmaduke found Marian reading in the summer-house in the fruit garden.
She looked at him in lazy surprise as he seated himself opposite to her
at the table.

"This is the first chance I've had of talking to you privately since I
came down," he said. "I believe you have been keeping out of my way on
purpose."

"Well, I concluded that you wanted as many chances as possible of
talking to some one else in private; so I gave you as many as I could."

"Yes, you and the rest have been uncommonly considerate in that respect:
thank you all awfully. But I mean to have it out with you, Miss Marian,
now that I have caught you alone."

"With me! Oh, dear! What have I done?"

"What have you done? I'll tell you what youve done. Why did you send
Conolly, of all men in the world, to tell me that I was in disgrace
here?"

"There was no one else, Marmaduke."

"Well, suppose there wasn't! Suppose there had been no one else alive on
the earth except you, and I, and he, and Constance, and Su--and
Constance! how could you have offered him such a job?"

"Why not? Was there any special reason--"

"Any special reason! Didnt your common sense tell you that a meeting
between him and me must be particularly awkward for both of us?"

"No. At least I--. Marmaduke: I think you must fancy that I told him
more than I did. I did not know where you were; and as he was going to
London, and I thought you knew him well, and I had no other means of
warning you, I had to make use of him. Jasper will tell you how
thoroughly trustworthy he is. But all I said--and I really could not say
less--was that I was afraid you were in bad company, or under bad
influence, or something like that; and that I only wanted you to come
down here at once."

"Oh! Indeed! That was _all_, was it? Merely that I was in bad company."

"I think I said under bad influence. I was told so; and I believed it at
the tim