Hugh's tone was haughty. I looked across the breakfast table at him with a smile, feeling I had one on my side to do battle for the absent one.
'It's awfully disappointing,' grumbled Nelly. 'I was looking forward to our visit at his place, and have refused several invitations that I might have had instead of it. When people go off to America they generally stay there for years, and are never heard of any more.'
'That is cheerful for me,' I said, forcing a laugh; 'but America is not very far off, Nelly, the passage takes next to no time, it is only a question of a few weeks.'
'It is well to keep up your spirits, Goody, but it looks bad—very bad!' and Kenneth shook his head with mock solemnity as he spoke. 'We all noticed his gloom and uneasiness the last evening he was here. I am afraid he has a "dark past," and his conscience is troubling him. Be prepared for the worst. It may be a case of another woman, Goody. In the style of the penny dreadfuls, a wife that he thought dead may have turned up again, and then where would you be? He may have been married two or three times before, for all we know!'
'That will do,' General Forsyth said sternly; 'such jokes are extremely out of place, and we will have no more of them.'
And Kenneth subsided, to my great relief. I felt I could bear very little more, and was glad to get away alone and bear my disappointment as best I could.
But the next few weeks were very trying ones. Not for an instant did I doubt Philip, but others did, and the remarks and conjectures on his sudden departure were hard for me to sit and listen to.
I did not hear from him again, except a post-card to announce his arrival in New York. I wrote to him there, but received no answer, and the time of waiting and suspense seemed interminable.
If I had not learnt the secret of 'dwelling deep' in dark times, I sometimes think I should not have been able to live through that time. The Forsyths were kind, and felt for me, I knew; but my guardian was angry by the suddenness of it all, and persisted in looking upon me as being ill-treated in the matter. Nelly took the very blackest view, and declared I would never hear of or see him again, whilst Kenneth spent his time in concocting the most elaborate stories and bringing them out for my benefit, of different people who mysteriously disappeared, and the causes of their doing so. Hugh was the only one who with me felt it must be right, and he often cheered me by assurances of his speedy return.
'It is most likely money matters,' he said one day to me; 'I know a good deal of his income is in some funds in New York. He has some cousin in business there, who manages things for him.'