"And Hein! You could read it." He dropped a spoonful of jam into his tea, fishing for it patiently. "You read the scraps. You were there, then—a little sea bird. Will you show me the letter, Miss Gheena, if it is with you? It is not good, this syrup that I have made. No, you have not got the letter. Well, later."
The girl's return to Castle Freyne was as marching from sunshine into a pea-soupy London fog, in the centre of which sat Dearest George, and Lancelot, frail and fretful, resenting the sorrow which he had immersed in.
The sea kissed the feet of an opal sky. The air was soft and fresh. Gheena sat, white-faced, with ill-concealed impatience, listening to fresh arguments as to her future and her folly in not agreeing with everyone else.
"Eleven more obstinate men I never saw," remarked Gheena to the fire, and referring to the one juryman who upset the verdict for hours. Psyche, stepping in and out of the close library, now whispered of a hunt on the morrow—a meet at Mount Beresford at ten in the morning.
The word "meet" sounded like a knell. Gheena meant to stop the horses going, to appeal to her mother.
"And even if it's woods the hounds will yowl and we shall gallop," said Psyche.
Here Mr. Freyne, rising, assumed the attitude before the fire so dear to man, and remarked that the hounds might, but no one from Castle Freyne would.
Gheena stood up also; she stared.
"Because I have done my duty towards my country," went on Dearest George heavily, "and retrenched. If Gheena had been back an hour ago"—his stepdaughter's face frightened him a little—"they might have been. But now—the Army."
"You have—sold all my horses," Gheena heard a strange hoarse voice whispering—"Redbird, which I loved. Not—you dared——"