All this Daisy heard; and once again she saw Lord Lindfield look up towards the end of the verandah where she was standing, and then call some laughing reply after Mrs. Halton, who was already just vanishing indoors. For a couple of steps he followed her, then turned round and came up the verandah towards Daisy.
"Mrs. Halton has arranged a regular night of it, Miss Daisy," he said, "and has challenged me to a game of billiards in such a way that I can't refuse. We're going to have a game of pool first. Won't you come and take a hand? You and I will play Mrs. Halton and Braithwaite."
"Why shouldn't we? But probably you think it's stupid to go indoors on such a night. So it is. I would much sooner stroll about or go on the river, but, you see, I can't help myself. Let's go in the punt to-morrow. Please keep a punt for you and me. Put a label on--'You and Me.'"
Daisy smiled. She would not have allowed that she needed cheering up at all, but it is a fact that this cheered her up.
"Yes, do let us spend all day on the river to-morrow," she said. "But you must go and play your pool now. I don't think I shall come in; it is so heavenly out here."
Lord Lindfield wavered; the girl looked enchantingly pretty. "Upon my word, so it is," he said; "and you look just like a summer evening yourself, Miss Daisy. Wonder if I could get some one to take my place at pool before I play a single with Mrs. Halton, and stop out here with you?"
Pleasant though the deed would have been to Daisy, his wish and his desire were more essential. She could without struggle forgo the pleasure of being with him, now that he had said that it was this that he preferred.
"But indeed you mustn't do anything of the kind," she said. "Aunt Jeannie wants you to play; she asked you. You must go in at once."
The fact that Mrs. Halton had carried off two men to the billiard-room left the rest of the party out of the square; but Daisy, quite willing to be the odd unit, strolled very contentedly out along the path that led to the river. The moon had not long risen and shone very large and low in the east, burning dimly and red through the heat haze and vapours from the Thames. The air was very windless, and the river lay like a sheet of grey steel at her feet, save where a little spreading feather of black ripple showed the course of some water-rat. Bats wheeled and dipped like some company of nocturnal swallows, pursuing their minute prey, and uttering their little staccato cries so high in the scale that none but the acute ear could hear them.