Barres started to answer, but checked himself, and glanced across at Dulcie without knowing exactly why.
"I don't know," he said irresolutely. "I'm fed up now.... But----" he continued to look vaguely at Dulcie, as though something of his uncertainty remotely concerned her.
"I'm ready to go over when you are," remarked Westmore, placidly smiling at Thessalie, who immediately presented her pretty profile to him and settled down on the fountain rim beside Dulcie.
"Darling," she said, "it's about time to dress. Are you going to wear that enchanting white affair we discovered at Mandel's?"
Barres senior came sauntering out of the woods and through the wall gate, switching a limber rod reflectively. He obligingly opened his creel and displayed half a dozen long, slim trout.
"They all took that midge fly I described to you this afternoon," he said, with the virtuous satisfaction of all prophets.
Everybody inspected the crimson-flecked fish while Barres senior stood twirling his monocle.
"Are we dining at home?" inquired his son.
"I believe so. There is a guest of honour, if I recollect--some fellow they're lionising--I don't remember.... And one or two others--the Gerhardts, I believe."
"Then we'd better dress, I think," said Thessalie, encircling Dulcie's waist.
"Sorry," said Barres senior, "hoped to take you young ladies out on the second lake and let you try for a big fish this evening."
He walked across the lawn beside them, switching his rod as complacently as a pleased cat twitches its tail.
"We'll try it to-morrow evening," he continued reassuringly, as though all their most passionate hopes had been bound up in the suggested sport; "it's rather annoying--I can't remember who's dining with us--some celebrated Irishman--poet of sorts--literary chap--guest of the Gerhardts--neighbours, you know. It's a nuisance to bother with dinner when the trout rise only after sunset."
"Don't you ever dine willingly, Mr. Barres, while the trout are rising?" inquired Thessalie, laughing.
"Never willingly," he replied in a perfectly sincere voice. "I prefer to remain near the water and have a bit of supper when I return." He smiled at Thessalie indulgently. "No doubt it amuses you, but I wager that you and little Miss Soane here will feel exactly as I do after you've caught your first big trout."