“Well, Charlotte, if any unexpected good luck had fallen to you, I think I’d not have jeered and laughed.”
“Dear old Owen!”—and she patted his arm—“did I jeer and laugh? I beg your pardon, but the idea is so grotesque I cannot get to face it, and it all seems so funny. You know I’ve an extraordinary sense of humour; it bubbles up in spite of me, like a kettle on the boil! In my mind’s eye, when I see you so tall, erect, and dignified, with a wild and tattered Irish colleen hanging to your arm, I really cannot feel serious; but you know very well, dear, that my heart is in the right place! I suppose”—and she paused and looked up in his face—“you would not like me to go with you?”
This was, as she was well aware, a perfectly safe offer.
“No, no, I must be off. No time to lose. Pray do not mention the matter to a soul. I’ll write and wire. Good-bye”; and despite her protestations that she would come with him and help him to pack, he waved her a denial and a valediction.
As she heard the garden gate click her ladyship scrambled once more into the hammock, lit a cigarette, and abandoned herself to contemplation.
No, no; if it really came to anything, if the story were true, if this journey provided her with a stepdaughter, it would be too detestable. How she would hate the commotion, the gossip, and—the girl!
CHAPTER XIV
It was a soft and exquisite autumn afternoon. A delicate blue haze lay over the hills; the dense, dark woods were steeped in breathless silence, and the only sound that caught the ear, was the rattle of a reaping machine. As Lord Mulgrave and Mr. Usher turned down the long, straight road leading to Foley’s Corner, the earl was livid, his expression was set; evidently he was struggling in the grip of some vehement emotion, and the name of this disturbing element was “suspense.” Would it be true? or false? Would it be Joseline’s daughter? or some raw, uncouth stranger? Was it the wild-goose chase his wife had predicted, or the pursuit and capture of happiness? Oh, these next ten minutes would mean so much to him; he almost felt, this self-contained man, as if he were treading on the very boundaries of life and death.