'My father's glance of cold surprise, and the tone of annoyance with which he asked this, checked my tears in a moment.
'"Well!" he repeated when I hesitated, thoroughly ashamed of having behaved so childishly before a stranger. "Oh, is that all?" he said when I murmured something about hunting; and he looked at Sir Harry with a laugh, and an expressive shrug of the shoulders. "Don't be a baby, child! I expected to find you more of a woman."
'This was humiliating. I would have given up two or three days' hunting now not to have cried.
'"Never mind, Mistress Frances," said good-natured Sir Harry; "you can go a-hunting when I am gone, you know. I shall be off to-morrow morning, so you only have to-day to make my acquaintance; and you and I are going to be great friends, I am sure." And so we were, before many minutes had passed. My tears dried in the wind, and in a little while I found myself talking and laughing with Sir Harry Mountfort as if I had known him all my life, and much more at my ease then I had ever ventured to be with my father. Sir Harry asked me all sorts of questions, paid me all sorts of compliments, and said the most absurd things with the gravest of faces; and my father, too, talked more pleasantly than he had ever talked to me before, and laughed at his friend's ridiculous speeches as much as I did myself. I began to think Sir Harry the kindest man I had ever seen, and yet every now and then there was something in his eyes that gave me a suspicion that he was what Robin would call "chaffing me." All the time, I had a vague sort of feeling that my mother would dislike him, though I could not feel sure why. As we rode up to the house, Miles and Roger came tearing out of the poultry-yard to see who we were, but, upon closer inspection, tore back again, and, by the time we had dismounted, reappeared walking demurely one on each side of mamma, who wore her great black garden hood, and had her apron filled with eggs. However she was dressed, mamma could not look anything but a thorough lady, and a very beautiful woman too; still my father, as he greeted her and introduced Sir Harry Mountfort, was evidently a little bit distressed at her costume, and, I could see, was particularly scandalized at the exhibition of the eggs. "So you have brought back Frances!" she said, looking anxiously at my face, which still showed signs of my crying fit.
'"Nothing has happened? She has had no accident with Hebe?"
'"No, sweetheart," replied my father, with a tinge of impatience in his voice; "I wanted the child at home to-day. Surely when I come home, after being absent for so long, my daughter might be content to spend a few hours with me without grudging." Then, as I ran away to change my habit and tell my adventures to the boys, I heard him add in a lower key: "I must have a little conversation with you about Frances, Sir Harry and I have——"
'The rest of the sentence I lost, but I had heard enough to throw me into a state of extreme curiosity and excitement. Something must be going to happen to me,—there could be no doubt about that; but was it to be something agreeable or disagreeable? I felt half frightened, yet at the same time in tremendously high spirits, as I pondered over this mysterious something, and made all sorts of wild guesses as to what it could be. How I longed for Oliver to come home, that I might talk it over with him! But I knew he would not return till late in the afternoon; and Miles and Roger were so little. Besides, Roger was always making odd remarks, and saying just the thing one did not want him to say. There was no telling what he might repeat before Sir Harry or my father; for Roger never knew what it was to be afraid of anybody, and he had a way of looking at you solemnly, with his head first on one side and then on the other, and then coming out suddenly, in his slow grave voice, with some observation that from any of the rest of us would have sounded most impertinent, but which, from him, only sent people into fits of laughter. No! it would not do, I decided, to consult Miles and Roger. I must keep my conjectures to myself till I could be alone with mamma. She might perhaps tell me something, if there was anything to tell. I saw nothing of her, however, till dinner, which was in the middle of the day, not at eight o'clock in the evening: that was our supper-hour. We generally dined all together, even when my father was at home; but now that Sir Harry was in the house, I was rather afraid that we should be condemned to have dinner in the nursery. That might be all very well for the little boys; but for me, the eldest of the family, mamma's companion, to be classed with them, would be too humiliating. So I fussed and fidgeted, snapped at my brothers, and made nurse quite angry, and good-humoured Rebecca almost cross, by perpetually teasing them to know whether they thought I should be allowed to dine down-stairs. At length a man's step was heard on the staircase, and, when the door opened, who should be seen but my father! Nurse jumped up as if she thought the house must be on fire; Rebecca upset her work-basket and knocked down the fire-irons; and Miles and I stopped in the middle of a furious quarrel about a drum, which he wanted to turn into a cage for dormice. No wonder my father created such a sensation in the nursery; for never before had he been seen there, since I could remember, except once, when Oliver had swallowed a bullet, and was supposed to be dying. "Come down with me, Frances," said he, not deigning to observe the commotion he had excited. He held out his hand, and I sprang towards him, casting a triumphant glance at Miles and Roger as I did so. But my father, instead of taking me at once down-stairs, surveyed me all over so critically that I hung down my head and blushed crimson, painfully conscious of a large hole recently torn in my dress, and of hair which might have been brushed that morning, but which looked as if it had not been touched for a week.
'"Go and tell nurse to make you fit to be seen, child," said he in his usual cold, measured tones; "and then you can come with me."
'Of course nurse was excessively elaborate in her proceedings after this injunction. I thought she never would have done combing and curling my unfortunate locks, or arranging and smoothing each plait and fold of my best dress. But at last it was over, and I suppose the result was satisfactory; for though my father led me away without a word, Sir Harry Mountfort turned to my mother when we entered the dining-room, and said something about "a sweet little bride," and "hoping to see a coronet on those pretty dark tresses,"—remarks which, while they puzzled me exceedingly, caused me to hold up my head and colour with surprise and pleasure.
'I had never heard so many compliments before, and felt rather vexed that mamma only smiled very faintly, and immediately began to talk about something else—about a certain Earl Desmond, in whom both she and my father appeared to be greatly interested, though I, who had never heard his name before, could not care about him. So I let my thoughts wander off to all kinds of subjects. I wondered what sort of a day's sport Oliver and Shad were having,—whether Hebe was as sorry as I was, to be cheated of her day with the hounds; and then I wondered afresh what Sir Harry's mysterious words could mean. Perhaps it would be as well to listen to what was going on, in case I might be able to glean something from the conversation about myself. So I turned my eyes away with an effort from the sunny slope of green, swelling down, on which they were gazing (you know the view from the window of the oak parlour), and fixed them on Sir Harry just as he was saying: