Marmaduke's face is white as death.
"Nothing," he answers, with an effort. "It is only a stagy way he has of speaking. Let us forget him."
----
So Mark Gore drops out of our life for the present. Three days later Lady Blanche Going also takes her departure.
As we assemble in the hall to bid her good-bye—I, from an oppressive sense of what is demanded by the laws of courtesy, the others through the dawdling idleness that belongs to a country house—she sweeps up to me, and, with an unusually bewitching smiles, says, sweetly:—-
"Good-bye, dear Mrs. Carrington. Thank you so much for all your kindness to me. I really don't remember when I have enjoyed myself so well as here at dear old Strangemore with you."
Here she stoops forward, as though she would press her lips to my cheek. Instantaneously dropping both her hand and my handkerchief, I bend to pick up the latter; when I raise myself again, she has wisely passed on, and so I escape the hypocritical salute.
Marmaduke puts her, maids, traps, and all, into the carriage. The door is shut, the horses start; I am well rid of another troublesome guest. I draw a deep sigh of relief as two ideas present themselves before my mind. One is, that I am better out of it all than I deserve; the second, that never again, under any circumstances, shall she enter my doors.
----
It is the night before Harriet's departure, and almost all our guests have vanished. Our two military friends have resumed their regimental duties a week ago; Sir George Ashurst has gone to London for a little while; Dora has decided on burying herself at Summerleas during his absence—I suppose to meditate soberly upon the coming event.