Tristram got up. "Well, we must be getting on, if that is settled, and you can both come on Saturday." M. de la Roche-Guyon also rose, very slowly.
"No, Tristram," interjected the Rector, laying hold of his arm, "you positively must stay ten minutes, because I've had this letter from Liverpool about James Stack and his wife emigrating to Canada. I had thought I should be able to get them off almost at once, but the shipping company say—there, you'd better see it." He fumbled in his pockets. "Horatia, suppose you take M. de la Roche-Guyon into the garden for five minutes."
Horatia was preceding the guest down the path when he said softly behind her: "There are advantages, after all, in Canada's having passed into English hands. As a Frenchman, I never expected to admit them."
"Why, what"—began Miss Grenville, stopping, and then suddenly finding his meaning quite clear. She coloured, was angry with herself, and tried to retrieve her slip by saying, "Papa has helped two or three of the parish to emigrate out there."
Armand was now walking beside her, along the line of flowers where autumn had begun to lay a hand in the week that had passed since he had sat there. But he showed no disposition to follow up his sally. On the contrary he looked rather moody, almost cross. It was a new phase. And after a moment or two he said, kicking a stone along the path:
"I am not looking forward to this dinner-party, Mademoiselle. Mr. Hungerford is too kind. What have you and I to do with these grave persons? I don't know Hebrew!"
It was new to Horatia to be classed among the more frivolous portion of an assembly, and classed there by, and in conjunction with, a young man. "Ah, but you forget the Trenchard girls," she said lightly. "They do not know Hebrew either, and they are very pretty. Their mother is French; have you not heard about them?"
"Mr. Hungerford told me something, but I am afraid I did not listen; I was not interested."
"But you ought to be interested. It is rather romantic. Their mother, when she was quite young, was a lady-in-waiting to Madame Elisabeth. She fled to England, and her lover—who was a Frenchman, of course—fought through the Vendean war and came to England and married her. But next year he went back with the expedition to Quiberon, and was killed there. I can't remember his name. Then she married Mr. Trenchard, a Suffolk squire, and had several children, I think about eight—anyhow Trenchards have been staying here with Mrs. Willoughby, who is Mr. Trenchard's sister, ever since I can remember. And once I saw Mrs. Trenchard herself; somehow she did not look as if she had been through all those things as a girl."
Her hearer lent her sufficient interest, at any rate he was looking at her, a tiny frown between his dark eyebrows. "But you spoke of another daughter?"