CHAPTER XVII
The two met next day during the morning, and half an hour's discussion was sufficient to enable Edgar to fill a half-sheet with notes of things he had to do, with regard to this little cruise in the Southern sea, and to leave him with the certainty that nothing had been omitted. The yacht, which was at Southampton, was to start for Marseilles as soon as it could get its coaling and provisioning done, and on receipt of a telegram that it had arrived there, he and Lucia would leave London and travel overland. They might, in fact, hope to start in ten days' time at the outside. But these ten days would be rather full: bimetallists and small-holders clamoured for his presence on committees; there was also an inside-of-a-week visit which should be paid, and it was necessary for him, at any rate, to go down to Brayton for a night or so, to collect the photographic apparatus and the guide-books without which visits to foreign lands were shorn of half their potential profit. Lucia had laughed at such an idea: what was simpler than to send to Brayton for all the guide-books and all the photographic apparatus? But Edgar had used a phrase that she knew well to be final—"One feels safer if one sees to things oneself." But this visit to Brayton was hard to work in with the other visit, and, in upshot, Lucia was to write an apologetic letter to Mouse, saying that she would come, but that Edgar would not. As a matter of fact, this adjustment seemed to her almost ideal, for, as she heard from other sources, Maud was laid up with a cold that resembled influenza, and Charlie was going there alone. She felt she would like to see Charlie before they left, for she would not see him again for some time. They were giving a couple of shooting-parties at Brayton, but he and Maud had been unable to come to them. And before Christmas the latter left for St. Moritz, where they would spend six weeks.
Lucia came out from her husband's room, when these arrangements had been talked over, and went slowly upstairs. It was her
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