Philip has been absent since the morning; so Molly and Lady Stafford dine in the latter's old sitting-room alone, and, confessing as the hours grow late to an unmistakable dread of the "uncanny," sleep together, with a view to self-support.
About one o'clock next day all is over. Mr. Amherst has been consigned to his last resting-place,—a tomb unstained by any tears. At three the will is to be read.
Coming out of her room in the early part of the afternoon, Cecil meets unexpectedly with Mr. Potts, who is meandering in a depressed and aimless fashion all over the house.
"You here, Plantagenet! Why, I thought you married to some fascinating damsel in the Emerald Isle," she cannot help saying in a low voice, giving him her hand. She is glad to see his ugly, good-humored, comical face in the gloomy house, although it is surmounted by his offending hair.
"So I was,—very near it," replies he, modestly, in the same suppressed whisper. "You never knew such a narrow escape as I had: they were determined to marry me——"
"'They'! You terrify me. How many of them? I had no idea they were so bad as that,—even in Ireland."
"Oh, I mean the girl and her father. It was as near a thing as possible; in fact, it took me all I knew to get out of it."
"I'm not surprised at that," says Cecil, with a short but comprehensive glance at her companion's cheerful but rather indistinct features.
"I don't exactly mean it was my personal appearance was the attraction," he returns, feeling a strong inclination to explode with laughter, as is his habit on all occasions, but quickly suppressing the desire, as being wicked under the circumstances. The horror of death has not yet vanished from among them. "It was my family they were after,—birth, you know,—and that. Fact is, she wasn't up to the mark,—wasn't good enough. Not but that she was a nice-looking girl, and had a lovely brogue. She had money too—and she had a—father! Such a father! I think I could have stood the brogue, but I could not stand the father."