Lady Staveley looked wishfully up in her husband's face, longing to tell him all her suspicions. But as yet her grounds for them were so slight that even to him she hesitated to mention them.
"His being here is no trouble to me, of course," she said.
"Of course not. You tell him so, and he'll stay," said the judge. "I want to see him to-morrow myself;—about this business of poor Lady Mason's."
Immediately after that he met his son. And Augustus also told him that Graham was going.
"Oh no; he's not going at all," said the judge. "I've settled that with your mother."
"He's very anxious to be off," said Augustus gravely.
"And why? Is there any reason?"
"Well; I don't know." For a moment he thought he would tell his father the whole story; but he reflected that his doing so would be hardly fair towards his friend. "I don't know that there is any absolute reason; but I'm quite sure that he is very anxious to go."
The judge at once perceived that there was something in the wind, and during that hour in which the pheasant was being discussed up in Graham's room, he succeeded in learning the whole from his wife. Dear, good, loving wife! A secret of any kind from him was an impossibility to her, although that secret went no further than her thoughts.
"The darling girl is so anxious about him, that—that I'm afraid," said she.