With the hint thus conveyed she felt her letter to be discreetly worded.
By the time she had slipped down the driveway to the box at the gate and
posted it with her own hands her father had returned.

She had ordered tea in the little oval sitting-room they used when quite
alone, and told the maid to say she was not receiving if anybody called.
She knew her father would be tired, but she hoped that if they were
undisturbed he would talk to her of his affairs. There was so much in
them that was mysterious to her. Notwithstanding her partial recovery
from the shock of the morning, she still felt herself transported to a
world in which the needs were new to her, and the chain of cause and
effect had a bewildering inconsequence. For this reason it seemed to her
quite in the order of things--the curiously inverted order now
established, in which one thing was as likely as another--that her
father should stretch himself in a comfortable arm-chair and say nothing
at all till after he had finished his second cup of tea. Even then he
might not have spoken if her own patience had held out.

"So you didn't go away, after all," she felt it safe to observe.

"No, I didn't."

"Sha'n't you _have_ to go?"

There was an instant's hesitation.

"Perhaps not. In fact--I may almost definitely say--_not_. I should like
another cup of tea."

"That makes three, papa. Won't it keep you awake?"