"No, I am going to stay here," said the girl, without raising her eyes. Her tone was exceedingly cold.
Flossy bit her lip, laughed again, and sank back into her chair with an air of would-be indifference.
"If you stay, I suppose I must," she said lightly; but there was a strange glitter in her narrowed eyes, and she bit her lip with her little white teeth so strongly and so sharply as to draw the blood.
"Here comes Dick," said the General, whose placidity was quite restored by his wife's consent to stay—"here he comes! There, my boy—seen Uncle Hubert yet? Go and kiss him, and then come back to me and I'll give you some dessert."
The fair-haired little fellow looked smaller and shyer than Hubert remembered him. He had very little color in his face, but his eyes lighted up joyfully when he saw the visitor, and he put his arms around Hubert's neck with such evident satisfaction that his uncle felt quite flattered. But, when Dick was perched upon his father's knee, and the singers had struck up their first florid chant, he was surprised to find that Enid had raised her blue eyes and was steadily regarding him with a searching yet sorrowful look, which seemed as if it would explore the inmost recesses of his soul. For various reasons Hubert felt that he could not long endure that gaze. The best way of stopping it was to return it, and therefore, although with an effort which was almost agonising, he suddenly looked back into her eyes with a composure and resolute boldness which caused her own very speedily to sink. The color rose to her face, she gave a slight quickly-suppressed sigh, and she did not look up again. Puzzled, troubled, vaguely suspicious, Hubert wondered whether his calm reception of her gaze had silenced the doubt of him, which he was nearly sure that he read in those sad blue eyes. He knew that Flossy was watching him and watching her, and he envied the General his guileless enjoyment of all that was going on, and little Dick's innocent pleasure in what was to him a great and unwonted treat.
When two songs had been sung, with much growling of the bass and a general misconception of the functions of a tenor, with great scraping of violin strings and much want of harmony amongst the 'cellos, the General called the butler and told him to open the door. The dining-room had two wide folding-doors opening into the hall, and, when they were flung open, a motley crowd of village faces could be seen. A row of shrill-voiced chorister boys, much muffled up in red comforters, stood foremost; behind them came the singing men and the performers on instruments—a diverse little crowd of men and youths. In the background, some six or eight singing women and girls presented a half-bold, half-shy appearance, as knowing that they were there on sufferance only, and that the Rector had been doing his best to prevent their going out at nights to sing with the village choir. But the General had "backed them up;" he did not like the discontinuance of old customs, and was inclined to think the Rector unduly strict. Accordingly they stood in their accustomed places, but, as most of them felt, probably for the last time on New Year's Eve.
The faces of men and women and children, with one exception, were wreathed in smiles; but that one exception was notable indeed. Hubert, with his trained powers of keen observation, observed a lowering face directly. It was that of tall young woman neatly dressed in black—a young woman with fair hair curled over her forehead and rather prominent blue eyes—a coarse-looking girl, he thought, in spite of her pale coloring and sombre garments. Her brows were drawn together over her eyes in an angry frown; she was biting her lip, much as Flossy had been doing, and there was not a gleam of good humor or pleasure in her eyes. Hubert wondered idly why she had come, when she seemed to enjoy her occupation so very little.
The opening of the doors was the signal for a volley of clapping, stamping, and shouting. When this was over, the butler and his helpers appeared with trays of well-filled glasses, which were taken by the members of the choir, down to the smallest child present, with great alacrity. The fair woman in the background was once more an exception—she took no wine.
The General filled his own glass and signed for Hubert to do the same for the ladies. He then stood up and prepared to make his usual New Year's Eve speech. But this time he did what he had never done before—he lifted his little son on to the chair on which he had been sitting, and made his oration with one arm round little Dick's slender shoulders. To Hubert it seemed a pretty sight. Why did it give no pleasure to Florence and to Enid? Florence's eyes glittered, and a spot of blood was painfully conspicuous on her white lips; but Enid, sitting silent with downcast eyes, was now unusually flushed. A student of character might have said that, while Flossy seemed merely excited, Enid—the timid, delicate, pure-minded Enid—looked ashamed.
"My dear friends," the General began, "I'm very much obliged to you for coming, you know—very much obliged. So are my wife and my niece, and my little boy here—so far as he understands anything about it—very much obliged to you all. You know I ain't much of a speech-maker—'actions speak louder than words' was always my maxim"—great cheering—"and I take leave to say that I think it is a very good maxim too"—tremendous applause. "My friends, it's the end of one year, and it will soon be the beginning of another. Let's hope that the new year will be better than the last. I don't suppose I shall have many more to spend amongst you, and that is why I wish to introduce—so to speak—my little boy to you. As my son and heir, my friends, he will one day stand in the place which I now occupy, and speak to you perhaps as I am speaking now. I can only ask you to behave as well to him as you have always behaved to me. I trust that he will prove himself worthy of his name and of his race, and that generations yet unborn will bless the day when Beechfield Hall came into the hands of a younger Richard Vane. My friends, if you drink my health to-night, I shall ask you also to drink the health of my boy—to wish him happiness, and that he may prove a better landlord, a better magistrate, and a better man than ever I have been."