“They are safe and sound, then?” cried the housekeeper. “But how in the world did they get to the ruined abbey?”
“Doan’t know, missus. Perhaps they’ull know theysells. Will ’ee zend zoombody quick, please?”
Of course, three or four male servants were at once ready to accompany him. Mrs. Ormsby at first thought of sending the carriage, but the abbey was nearly two miles off by the road.
CHAPTER XVIII.
PAUL DESFRAYNE’S REFLECTIONS.
With a heart as heavy as lead, Paul Desfrayne turned back to rejoin the two girls, when he had ascertained that, though trembling a little from nervous fright, his horse, Greyburn, was quite safe. He thought what a fortunate dispensation of Providence it would have been had the One Hundred and Tenth Regiment been ordered on foreign service—say, to China or Timbuctoo.
How many poor fellows had been separated from all they loved best, never to behold adored faces more this side the grave, banished into semisolitude, while he was forced to abide within range of his dreaded Nemesis!
When he again appeared within the little chapel, he was by no means lively company. Cold, abstracted, silent, he seemed to make no effort to arouse himself. He was thinking, indeed, as his eyes wandered to the high windows through which the steady downpour of rain could be clearly seen, what a striking emblem of his life this black, pitiless storm might be.
Lois regarded him through her long, drooping eyelashes with mingled feelings of admiration and pique. Her belief that his thoughts were with another gained fresh impetus.
“Yet,” she said to herself, “why need he be so uncivil to me? Perhaps he imagines that if he were to be ordinarily attentive, I might flatter myself he meant to ask me to fulfil the hateful bargain. I would not marry him if he tried to persuade me to-morrow.”