“They said you wanted me,” cried he; “and here have I been searching for you in your dressing-room, and all over the house.”
“I desire to speak with you,” said she, proudly; and she motioned to a chair.
“I trust the séance is to be a brief one, otherwise I 'll beg a postponement,” said he, half laughingly. Then turning his glance towards Kate, he remarked for the first time the deathlike color of her face, and an expression of repressed suffering that all her self-control could not conceal. “Has anything happened? What is it?” said he, in a half-whisper.
But she never replied, nor even seemed to heed his question.
“Tell me, I beseech you,” cried he, turning to Lady Dorothea,—“tell me, has anything gone wrong?”
“It is precisely on that account I have sent for you, Captain Martin,” said her Ladyship, as she assigned to him a seat with a motion of her hand. “It is because a great deal has gone wrong here—and were it not for my vigilance, much more still likely to follow it—I have sent for you, sir, that you should hear from this young lady's lips a denial which, I own, has not satisfied me; nor shall it, till it be made in your presence and meet with your corroboration. Your looks, Miss Henderson,” said she, addressing her, “would imply that all the suffering of the present moment falls to your share; but I would beg you to bear in mind what a person in my sphere must endure at the bare possibility of the event which now demands investigation.”
“Good heavens! will not you tell me what it is?” exclaimed Martin, in the last extremity of impatience.
“I have sent for you, sir,” resumed she, “that you should hear Miss Henderson declare that no attentions on your part—no assiduities, I should perhaps call them—have ever been addressed to her; that, in fact”—here her Ladyship became embarrassed in her explanation,—“that, in fact, those counsels—those very admirable aids to your conduct which she on so many occasions has vouchsafed to afford you—have had no object—no ulterior object, I should perhaps call it—and that your—your intercourse has ever been such as beseems the heir of Cro' Martin, and the daughter of the steward on that property!”
“By Jove, I can make nothing of all this!” cried the Captain, whose bewildered looks fully corroborated the assertion.
“Lady Dorothea, sir, requires you to assure her that I have never made love to you,” said Kate Henderson, with a look of scorn that her Ladyship did not dare to reply to. “I,” added she, “have already given my pledge on this subject. I trust that your testimony will not gainsay me.”