"She likes lavender anywhere, ma'am," Carnaby said with a wink on the side not visible by his grandmother. "It's a favourite of hers."
Robinette could only be thankful that Lavendar was occupied in a _sotto voce_ discussion of wine with Bates, and she was able to conceal the bundle of herbs before his eyes met hers, for the fury she felt against her precious young kinsman at that moment she could have expressed only by blows.
Dinner seemed interminably long. Robinette, for more reasons than one, was preoccupied; Lavendar made few remarks, and Carnaby was possessed by a spirit of perfectly fiendish mischief, saying and doing everything that could most exasperate his grandmother, put her guests to the blush, and shock Miss Smeardon.
But at last Mrs. de Tracy rose from the table, and the ladies followed her from the room, leaving Lavendar to cope alone with Carnaby.
"My fair American cousin is more than usually lovely to-night, eh, Mr. Lavendar?" the boy said, with his laughable assumption of a man of the world.
"There, my young friend; that will do! you're talking altogether too much," said Lavendar, as he poured himself out a glass of wine and sat down by the open window to drink it. Carnaby, perhaps not unreasonably offended, lounged out of the room, and left the older man to his own meditations.
Robinette in the meantime went into the drawing room with her aunt, and they sat down together in the dim light while Miss Smeardon went upstairs to write a letter.
"Aunt de Tracy," Robinette began, "I was calling on Mrs. Prettyman just after you had been with her this afternoon, and do you know the dear old soul had taken the strangest idea into her head! She says you are going to ask her to leave the cottage."
"The land on which her cottage stands is about to be sold," said Mrs. de Tracy. "It is necessary that she should move."
"Yes, she quite understood that; but she thinks she is not going to get another house; that was what was distressing her, naturally. Of course she hates to leave the old place, but I believe if she gets another nicer cottage, that will quite console her," said Robinette quickly.
"I have no vacant cottage on the estate just now," said Mrs. de Tracy quietly.