“Did you not hear it from Cecil?”
“He has been away on leave for the last week. This is a sudden resolution.”
“Yes, Fordham goes on coughing, and Sydney has a bad cold, caught at the wedding. Did you see her?”
“Oh yes, I saw her,” he mechanically answered, while his mother continued—
“Mrs. Evelyn has been pressing me most kindly to let Armine go with them; but as Dr. Leslie assures me it is not essential, and he seems so much averse to it himself—”
“You know, mother, how I wish to hold my poor neglected Woodside to the last,” cried Armine. “Why is my health always to be made the excuse for deserting it?”
“You are not the only reason,” said his mother. “It is hard to keep Esther in banishment all this time, and I am in constant fear of a row about the shooting with that Gilbert Gould.”
“Has he been at it again!” exclaimed Jock, fiercely.
“You are as bad as Rob,” she said. “I fully expect a disturbance between them, and I had rather be no party to it. Oh, I shall be very thankful to get away, I feel like a prisoner on parole.”
“And I feel,” said Armine, “as if all we could do here was too little to expiate past carelessness.”