"No, Sir Owen, I'm not sorry; but this is a surprise, for Lady Ascott
didn't tell me. Were you at the concert?"

"No, I couldn't go; I was too ill. It was a privation to remain at
home thinking--What did you sing?"

Evelyn looked at him shrewdly, believing only a little in his
illness, and nearly convinced he had not gone to the concert because
he wished to keep his presence a secret from her... fearing she
would not come to Thornton Grange if she knew he were there.

"He missed a great deal; I told him so when I returned," said Lady
Ascott.

"But what can one do, Miss Innes, when one is ill? The best music in
the world--even your voice when one is ill--. Tell me what you
sang."

"Evelyn is going to sing at Glasgow; you will be able to go there
with her."

The servant announced another guest and Lady Ascott went forward to
meet him. Guest after guest, and all were greeted with little cries
of fictitious intimacy; and each in turn related his or her journey,
and the narratives were chequered with the names of other friends
who had been staying in the houses they had just come from. Evelyn
listened, thinking of her poor people, contrasting their
simplicities with the artificialities of the gang--that is how she
put it to herself--which ran about from one house to another,