“Not yet.”
“Marmaduke is gone?”
“Yes; he wanted to get up a Free-trade dinner for the welcoming”—here she smiled—“of one whom he says all Dorset will be delighted to welcome—your Uncle Brian. Worthy Duke! It is his hobby, and one likes to indulge him in it.”
“Most certainly. And where is the dinner—Uncle Brian's grand dinner—to take place?”
“I persuaded him to change it into a public meeting, and give the clay-cutters—many of them Mr. Locke Harper's former people, and some now old and poor—a New Year's feast instead. You will see to that, Nathanael?” And she laid her hand on his arm with rather more earnestness than the simple request warranted.
Nathanael assented hastily, and spoke of something else.
“I am rather sorry I asked my brother to meet me here; I forgot he has not been to Thornhurst for so many years.”
“It is time then that he came,” said Anne, gently. “I shall be very glad to see him.”
While she was speaking, her old servant entered, with the announcement of “Major Harper.”
Just the Major Harper of old—well-dressed, courtly, with his singularly handsome face, and his short dark moustache, sufficient to mark the military gentleman without degrading him into the puppy; Major Harper with his habitual good-natured smile and faultless bearing, so gracefully welcomed, so gaily familiar in London drawing-rooms.—But here?—