John answered emphatically, but very softly, "No."
"Why not? My letter would reach him in full time. Lord Ravenel has been to Paris and back since then. But—" turning full upon the young nobleman—"I think you said you had not seen Guy?"
"No."
"Did you hear anything of him?"
"I—Mrs. Halifax—"
Exceedingly distressed, almost beyond his power of self-restraint, the young man looked appealingly to John, who replied for him:
"Lord Ravenel brought me a letter from Guy this morning."
"A letter from Guy—and you never told me. How very strange!"
Still, she seemed only to think it "strange." Some difficulty or folly perhaps—you could see by the sudden flushing of her cheek, and her quick, distrustful glance at Lord Ravenel, what she imagined it was—that the boy had confessed to his father. With an instinct of concealment—the mother's instinct—for the moment she asked no questions.
We were all still standing at the hall-door. Unresisting, she suffered her husband to take her arm in his and bring her into the study.