"No, I don't grumble," said he, with a smile, and yet I fancied with something half like a sigh too. "Only I, personally, have very little pride of class."
"I'm glad to hear it," said I, and I ran in-doors.
I wanted to say good-night to Trayton Harrod. But in the parlor there was nobody but my sister, leaning up against the open casement and looking out into the fragrant summer night.
"What are you doing?" I asked, abruptly. "Where are they all?" And as I spoke I heard a step die away on the gravel outside.
"I have just let Mr. Harrod out," answered she, "and I came to close up the windows. I think mother has gone up-stairs with father. I don't believe he is well."
I did not answer. It was Joyce's place again, now that she was home, to close the front door after the guests. But it was the first time that Harrod had left the Grange without bidding me good-night. When Joyce asked me where the squire was I did not care. It was she who hastened out to meet him and made mother's apologies; it was she who let him out as she had let out the bailiff.
It needed a sudden scare about my dear father to bring me back to myself. He had had a bad fainting fit—the worst we had ever seen him in. It was the bell ringing up-stairs, and mother's frightened voice calling, that waked me from a dream. And the evening ended badly, as I had had a silly presentiment that it would end.