Pimpernel and Rosemary

At one moment she tried to lead the conversation into a more serious channel: "How do you think Anna is looking?" she asked abruptly.

"A bit peaky." Peter replied lightly, "poor little mole! When you go back to England," he went on more gravely, "you ought to take her with you. It would do her all the good in the world. Take her out of herself, I mean."

"She wouldn't come," Rosemary replied earnestly.

"Don't you think so?"

"Why, Peter," she retorted, feeling exasperated with him for this air of indifference even where Anna was concerned, "you know Anna would not come. For one thing," Rosemary added impulsively, "I don't suppose she would be allowed to."

"You mean her mother wouldn't let her?"

"No," she replied laconically. "I didn't mean that."

"Well, then?" he retorted. Then, as Rosemary, shocked, angry, remained silent, holding her lips tightly pressed together, almost as if she were afraid that words would slip out against her will, Peter shrugged his broad shoulders and rejoined flippantly:

"Oh, I suppose you mean old What's-his-name-Naniescu-and all that rubbish. I don't think he would worry much. He has been a brick, letting Anna and Philip out like that. I expect he would just as soon see them both out of the country as not. Jolly good thing it would be for both of them! They would learn some sense, the monkeys!"

He paused and looked round at Rosemary. Then, as she seemed to persist in her silence, he insisted:

"Don't you agree with me?"

"Perhaps," she replied, with a weary sigh.

"Anyway, you'll think it over, won't you?" Peter went on. "I am sure you could fix it up with old Naniescu. He admires you tremendously, you know."

It was all wrong, all wrong. Peter used to be so fond of little Anna. "Give her a kiss for me," were almost the last words he had spoken to Rosemary on the day of her wedding. His own affairs evidently pushed every other consideration into the remotest corner of his brain; and cricket matches were apparently of more importance than the danger which threatened Anna and Philip. Nor had Rosemary any longer the desire to break her promise to Jasper. She no longer wished to speak to Peter about Anna and Philip, or about the horrible alternative which Naniescu had put before her. Peter-this Peter-would not understand. Jasper had not understood either-but he had misunderstood in a different way. Rosemary realized how right he had been to extract that promise from her. Was not Jasper always right? And was it intuition that had prompted him, after all, rather than an attack of jealousy of which Rosemary, in her heart, had been so ready to accuse him?

Suddenly she felt a longing to get away from Peter, from this Peter whom she neither knew nor trusted. "I'll go in now, I think," she said abruptly; "the dew is rising, and my shoes are very thin."

And she started to walk more quickly. Slowly the shades of evening had been drawing in. Rosemary had not noticed before how dark it was getting. The line of shrubbery behind the perennial border was like a solid wall; and on the other side of the path the stretch of lawn, with its great clumps of pampas grass and specimen trees, became merged in the gathering shadows. Beyond the lawn glimmered the lights of the chateau, and the veranda in front of the drawing-room was like a great patch of golden light, broken by the long, straight lines of its supporting columns. There was no moon, only an infinity of stars; and in the flower border the riot of colour had faded into the gloom, leaving just the white flowers-the nicotiana, the Madonna lilies, a few violas-to break the even mantle spread by the night.

From the direction of the chateau there came a loud call of "Hallo!" to which Peter gave a lusty response. A voice shouted: "We are going in!"

"Right-o!" Peter responded. "We'll come in too!"

Then suddenly he gave a bound, and in an instant had leaped the border and disappeared in the shrubbery beyond. Rosemary, taken completely by surprise, had come to a halt. From the shrubbery there came a loud cry of terror, then a swear-word from Peter, and finally a string of ejaculations, all in Hungarian, and of distressful appeals for mercy in the name of all the saints in the calendar. The next moment Peter's white flannels glimmered through the foliage, and a second or two later he reappeared lower down, coming up the path and half dragging, half pushing in front of him a huddled-up mass, scantily clothed in ragged shirt and trousers, and crowned with a broad-brimmed hat, from beneath which came a succession of dismal howls.

"What is it?" Rosemary cried.

"That's what I want to know," was Peter's reply. "I caught sight of this blighter sneaking in the shrubbery, and got him by the ear, which he does not seem to like, eh, my friend?"

He gave the ear which he held between his fingers another tweak, and in response drew a howl from his victim, fit to wake the seven sleepers.