"Father is at liberty now," I said. "Please come this way." And he had no choice but to follow me round to the front.
Luckily for me, father was there alone, reading his newspaper in the few spare minutes before dinner; neither Joyce nor mother was visible. He welcomed Frank even more cordially than I had hoped.
"How are you, lad?" he cried, heartily. "Why, I didn't know you were near the place at all. When did you come?"
Frank sat down in his usual place, and the two talked together just as if they had never parted. All Frank's cautiousness, not to say half-heartedness, about father's scheme seemed to have evaporated, now that he was in his presence, just as if he were afraid or ashamed not to be as enthusiastic as he was. As I listened to them I couldn't believe that he had told me ten minutes before that father was "apt to be over-sanguine," and that he must not "set his heart too much" upon the matter. On the contrary, it seemed to be Frank who was sanguine, and father who was suggesting the difficulties of working; father, moreover, who used almost the very phrase about its being necessary to get the proper man to work the details, and Frank who declared, as he had declared before, that he would be the man. How was it that, as soon as his back was turned, the fire seemed to die out of him? Was he like some sort of fire-bricks that can absorb heat, and give it out again fiercely while the fire is around them, but that grow dead and cold as soon as the surrounding warmth is withdrawn?
But it was very pleasant to see them there talking as merrily as ever. Merrily? Well, yes, with Frank it was "merrily," but with father I don't think it had ever been anything but earnestly, and now I fancied that there was even a tinge of hopelessness about him which had not been there of old. Yet he smiled often, and treated Frank just in that half-rough, half-affectionate way that he had always had towards him—something protecting, something humorous, almost as though he traced in him a streak of weakness, but could not help being fascinated by the bright kindliness, the sympathetic desire to please in spite of himself.
Perhaps it was so with all of us—with all of us, excepting mother. She had never felt the fascination, she had always seen straight through the mirror. And as she had always been inexorable, so she was inexorable that day.
Father, in his eagerness about the interest that he had at heart, had forgotten all about Joyce, all about the reason why Frank Forrester should not be at the Grange. But I had not forgotten it; I knew mother would not have forgotten it, and I stood, with a trembling heart, listening for her step upon the stairs within.
She came at last, and one glance at her face told me that Frank's presence was no surprise to her; that she knew of it, and knew of it from Joyce. Her lips were pressed together half nervously, her blue eyes were smaller than usual; and she rustled her dress as she walked, which somehow always seemed to me a sure sign of displeasure in her. She did not hold out her hand to him, although he advanced with every show of cordiality to greet her as usual.
"Oh, Mrs. Maliphant, you are angry with me for coming here," cried he, in a half-humorous, half-appealing voice, that he was wont to use when he wanted to conciliate. "You're quite right. What can I say for myself?"