“What road is that, Mother?”
“Nay, I can’t tell you, Kitty; for just yet it is a secret between Edgar and me. He was glad to meet Piers again; and, if I am any judge, they will be better friends than ever before.”
Thus the two women talked the evening away, and were by no means sorry to be at their own fireside. “We could have done no good by going to the House,” said Kate. “If we were men, it would be different. They like it. Father says the House is the best club in London.”
“It gives men a lot of excuses,” said Mrs. Atheling, with a sigh. “I dare say your father won’t get home till late. You had better go to bed, Kitty.”
“Perhaps Piers may come with him.”
“I don’t think he will. He looked tired when he left here; he will be worse tired when he gets away from the Commons. He said he was going to speak again, if he got the opportunity,–that is, if he could find anything to contradict in Mr. Brougham’s speech. Piers likes saying, ‘No, sir!’ his spurs are always in fighting trim. Go to bed, Kitty. Piers won’t be back to-night, and I can say to father whatever I think proper.”
Mrs. Atheling judged correctly. Piers sat a long time before his opportunity came, and then he did not get the best of it. Brougham’s followers overflowed the Opposition benches, the Government side, and the gangway, and Piers exhausted himself vainly in an endeavour to get a hearing. It was late when he returned to Richmoor House, but the Duke was still absent, and the Duchess and Annabel at the opera. He went to the Duke’s private parlour, for there were some things he felt he must discuss before another day’s sitting; and the warmth and stillness, added to his own mental and physical weariness, soon overcame all the resistance he could make. The couch on which he had thrown himself was also a drowsy place; it seemed to sink softly down, and down, until Piers was far below the tide of thought, or even dreams.
It was then that Annabel returned. She came slowly and rather thoughtfully along the silent corridor. She had exhausted for the time being her fine spirits, her wit, almost her good looks. She hoped she would not meet Piers, and was glad in passing the door of his apartments to see no man in attendance, nor any sign of wakeful life. A little further on she noticed a band of light from the Duke’s private parlour; the door was a trifle open, left purposely so by Piers in order that his father might not be tempted to pass it. Tired as she was, she could not resist the opportunity it offered. She liked to show herself in her fineries to her guardian, for he always had a compliment for her beauty; and although she had listened for hours to compliments her vanity was still unsatiated. With a coquettish smile she pushed wider the door and saw Lord Exham. There could be no doubt of his profound insensibility; his face, his attitude, his breathing, all expressed the deep sleep of a thoroughly-exhausted man.
For one moment she looked at him curiously, then, at the instigation of the Evil One, her eyes saw the ring upon his hand, and her heart instantly desired it; for what reason she did not ask. At the moment she perhaps had no reason, except the wicked hope that its loss might make trouble between Kitty and her lover. With the swift, noiseless step that Nature gives to women who have the treachery and cruelty of the feline family, she reached Piers’s side. But rapid as her movement had been, her thought had been more rapid. “If I am caught, I will say I won a pair of gloves, and took the ring as the gage of my victory.”
She stooped to the dropped hand, but never touched it. The ring was large, and it was only necessary for her to place her finger and thumb on each side of it. It slipped off without pressing against the flesh, and in a moment it was in her palm. She waited to see if the movement had been felt. There was no evidence of it, and she passed rapidly out of the room. Outside the door, she again waited for a movement, but none came, and she walked leisurely, and with a certain air of weariness, to her own apartments. Once there all was safe; she dropped it into the receptacle in which she kept the key of her jewel-case, and went smiling to bed.