It is
really very humiliating," she went on meditatively, "how every
one always returns me."
"You talk such nonsense, Cynthia!" Lady Torrington exclaimed, a
little pettishly. "However, you found your way home all right?"
"Quite safely, thank you. I was going to write you a note this
afternoon. I went away on an impulse. All I can say is that I
am sorry. Do forgive me."
"Certainly!" was the somewhat chilly reply. "Somehow or other,
you seem to have earned the right to do exactly as you choose.
Some of my young men whom you had promised to dance with, were
disappointed, but after all, I suppose that doesn't matter."
"Not much," Lady Cynthia assented sweetly. "I think a few
disappointments are good for most of the young men of to-day."
"What did you do last night, Cynthia?" Margaret asked her
presently, when Lady Torrington had passed on.
"I eloped with your father," Lady Cynthia confessed, smiling
across at Sir Timothy. "We went for a little drive together and
I had a most amusing time. The only trouble was, as I have been
complaining to that tiresome woman, he brought me home again."
"But where did you go to?" Margaret persisted.
"It was an errand of charity," Sir Timothy declared.
"It sounds very mysterious," Francis observed. "Is that all we
are to be told?"
"I am afraid," Sir Timothy complained, "that very few people
sympathise with my hobbies or my prosecution of them.
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