She stood in the centre of the floor, resplendent and joyous, and waved her hand at arm’s length with a wide, free gesture to express gratulation and safety.
Mrs. Annandale was suddenly silent, her face more dismayed than when terror had distorted it. One might have thought the presence of Raymond was even less welcome than a raid of Indians. Her jaw fell; her head-dress was awry; her eyes grew troubled and then bright with a spark of irritation.
“Why does the creature have to come here? Has George Mervyn no better sense than to receive official reports in my presence?” She drew herself up to her extreme height to express the dignity of her personality and to repudiate the contaminating influences of official reports. But Raymond was already at the door.
A brief conference with Mervyn in the hall had sufficed for business, for he had no official matters to report to the acting commandant. It was merely a form to report at all. Raymond still cherished a proud and wounded consciousness of the false position in which he had been placed because of an exacting whim of his quondam friend. He could not have put his finger on the spot, but he knew he was suffering a counter-stroke for some blow dealt Mervyn’s vanity, unintentionally, unperceived, he could not say how. He had taken his punishment—the commandant’s reprimand, a most half-hearted performance—and the matter had passed. But Mervyn, in view of their old intimacy, had an uneasy wonder as to the terms on which they should meet again, and would fain it had been otherwise than under circumstances in which, if not obviously at fault, he was the ridiculous sport of an unsoldierly chance. Raymond, throughout the interview, had deported himself with punctilious formality, saluting with the respect due a superior officer, bearing himself with a null inexpressiveness, phrasing what he had to say with not a word to spare; only when he turned to the door of the parlor, and Mervyn bade him pause, did his impetuous identity assert itself.
“I hardly think,” said Mervyn, whose quick senses had caught something of the old lady’s protest, which reinforced a jealous folly that grudged even a glimpse of Arabella, “that a visit is in order at present. Mrs. Annandale is not well and the hour is late; the pettiaugre should not be kept waiting within the reach of marauding Indians.”
He even went so far as to lay a detaining hand on the door.
“Under your favor, sir,” said Raymond, stiffly, his blood boiling, his eyes on fire, “in so personal a matter I shall not consult your pleasure. I shall wait upon the ladies with such news as I can give them of the expedition.”
He had lifted his voice, and its round, rich volume penetrated the inner apartment. The door opened suddenly from within and he was greeted by Arabella, herself, in a sort of ecstasy of expectation. The wilderness, in whose vastness her father was submerged, seemed not so formidable when so soon after his departure she might have word how he was faring in its depths.
“Oh, Mr. Raymond!—how good of you to come and tell us the news—”
“I feared I might be intrusive,” he hesitated, his ill-humor put to rout at the very sight of her, and feeling a little abashed, a little wistful in having forced his way, so to speak, into her presence.