Robert Vavasour

“Can’t, I am packing,” I scribbled in pencil on the envelope, and gave it back to Charles, who was waiting in the hall for the answer. Two minutes after Lord Robert walked into the room, the door of which the footman had left open.

[56]

[56]

“I have come to help you,” he said in that voice of his that sounds so sure of a welcome you can’t snub him; “but where are you going?”

“I don’t know,” I said, a little forlornly, and then bent down and vigorously collected photographs.

“Oh, but you can’t go to London by yourself!” he said, aghast. “Look here, I will come up with you, and take you to my aunt, Lady Merrenden. She is such a dear, and I am sure when I have told her all about you she will be delighted to take care of you for some days until you can hunt round.”

He looked such a boy, and his face was so kind, I was touched.

“Oh no, Lord Robert! I cannot do that, but I thank you. I don’t want to be under an obligation to any one,” I said firmly. “Mr. Carruthers suggests a way out of the difficulty—that I should marry him, and stay here. I don’t think he means it really, but he pretends he does.”

He sat down on the edge of a table already[57] laden with books, most of which overbalanced and fell crash on the floor.

[57]

“So Christopher wants you to marry him, the old fox!” he said, apparently oblivious of the wreck of literature he had caused. “But you won’t do that, will you? And yet I have no business to say that. He is a dam— good friend, Christopher.”

“I am sure you ought not to swear so often, Lord Robert, it shocks me, brought up as I have been,” I said, with the air of a little angel.

“Do I swear?” he asked, surprised. “Oh no, I don’t think so—at least there is no ‘n’ to the end of the ‘dams,’ so they are only an innocent ornament to conversation. But I won’t do it, if you don’t wish me to.”

After that he helped me with the books, and was so merry and kind I soon felt cheered up, and by lunch time all were finished, and in the boxes ready to be tied up, and taken away. Véronique, too, had made great progress in the adjoining room, and was 

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