“Ah?” said Mr Riddell, with a long inquiring intonation. “But, Syl, I know my lambs by name, and I forget none of them; no more when their feet are in the green pastures, than when they are wandering on the mountain.”
“Thank you!” said Sylvester, with unconscious fervour.
Mr Riddell looked at him as he hurried up-stairs, and, in his prayers that night for those in trouble and distress of mind, he did not forget his well-beloved son.
Chapter Twelve.
As it was.
The letter, which Amethyst had posted with so much distress of mind, had been answered by a little note from Major Fowler, offering to take charge of the amethysts, if they could be privately handed over to him at Loseby. He would make the opportunity, he said, if Miss Haredale would watch for indications of the right moment.
Amethyst approved of selling the amethysts, and, hateful as was the secrecy with regard to Lucian, she braced herself up to the effort, with a sense of martyrdom. Lady Haredale contrived to work on her feelings, and bewilder her mind, and would have influenced her still further, if she had understood better the views that would influence an innocent and high-minded girl. Lady Haredale, with all her experience, and all her fine ladyhood, had the delight of a school-girl in sentimental mysteries. As she believed all her relations with “Tony” to be quite innocent, not to say praiseworthy, she confided much of them to Amethyst, finding even her daughter a better confidant than no one. Otherwise, no doubt, the affair could have been managed in a simpler fashion.
Amethyst listened, and half believed that her mother had been Tony’s good angel, but that stupid conventionalities obliged all this caution. She was so much puzzled by Una, that her mother’s light treatment of the matter seemed to her possibly the best and wisest. It was easier to fall back on the idea that Una talked exaggerated nonsense, than to recognise that Lady Haredale did so.