Dr. Bryant made no answer whatever. He rose, quitted the room, and was heard to enter his study, shutting the door heavily. Lettice knew that at last, he condemned her as guilty.
The Valentines had been nearly a month in London. Only in the outskirts; but the veriest fringe of the great City's garment is apt to seem overpowering to country people. After the "dear old Farm," where every patch of grass was familiar, and every bush was a friend, where cottages could be counted on the fingers, and people might be numbered by tens, the ceaseless rivers of human beings, the never-ending roll of human noise, and the uncountable blocks of human dwellings, had a tendency to weigh upon the spirits.
Perhaps Mr. Valentine felt this weight most severely. He was a thorough old yeoman, absolutely at home among the clods of a ploughed field, utterly lost among bricks and mortar. Not only had he lived in the country all his life, but love of rural quiet was inherited by him through a long line of yeomen forefathers; and dislike of crowds was ingrain. His gentle old wife grieved over the change, and was tried by the narrow limits of her new sphere; but she had no strong inherited proclivities either way, and her girlhood had been mainly spent in town. The brick and paving-stones, the hum of sound, seemed natural enough, only wearying from want of use. She grew at times pale and tired, but her placid face had not the forlorn look which fixed itself permanently in the lines of her husband's features.
Nan fretted and fumed, hated town restrictions, and above all things kicked fiercely against the wearing of gloves every time she set foot outside the front door. It was "like being in a prison," she wrathfully declared. But she had no support in the grumbling line from Wallace, who fell into the new manner of life with unlooked-for readiness, seeming to like it as well as the old. "Takes to London like a duck to water," grunted his father discontentedly.
And Prudence! Everybody had expected Prue to suffer under the uprooting. Quiet Prue, retiring Prue, the good home-daughter Prue, how should it be otherwise with her? A good deal of pity was wasted upon Prue; and people found themselves a little out of their reckonings. Prue showed no sign of suffering, beyond a reasonable amount of sorrow in bidding farewell to the old home. When they reached London she was not depressed; nay, she showed herself the most alert of the whole party, the quickest to spy out pleasant points in their novel surroundings, the readiest to discover fresh interests, the most eager to settle down and change "house" into "home."
"London seems to suit you, my girl, anyway," the old father sometimes observed, not quite approvingly. Prue had not for years worn so young and cheery a look. When it was remarked upon, she smiled, and even blushed a little.
Mrs. Valentine understood, and she alone. Others of the family knew that, on finding this new home, they had dropped—oddly, because without intention—into the Parish of a former acquaintance; and some of them remarked on the "curiousness" of so doing.
"Rev. Robert Kelly—yes, I remember him. Not a bad fellow. Dare say we shall like his sermons," Mr. Valentine said carelessly.
But Bertha was far-away, nursing a long and severe "case," while Nan and Wallace barely recollected the name of "Kelly." It had not been a prominent factor in their lives. Only Mrs. Valentine divined what this resuscitation of an old friendship might mean to her eldest daughter.
She was sorry for it. Prue had seemed uniformly happy of late years. Would it mean the former trouble over again—Prue caring too much, hoping too much, only to be disappointed.