“I was doing nothing of the kind,” he said, his temper flashing out. “Helen looked up at the same moment as I looked up. We all three looked up, in fact. It was purely accidental.”
Helen was vexed that Martin should speak so, but felt bound to endorse him.
“Indeed, father, it is so,” she said.
Again the silence descended, and Martin, seeing that both his father and sister had finished their meat, changed their plates and arranged the second course. After a very long pause their father spoke again.
“I should have thought my children might have had something to say to me in the evening when they have left me alone all day, enjoying themselves elsewhere. Has nothing happened to you since breakfast which I am worthy of hearing?”
Martin’s intolerance of this injustice again stung him into ill-advised speech.
“I tried to tell you what I have been doing,” he said, “but you stopped me. You said it was unsuitable,” and his handsome face flushed angrily.
Then a thing unprecedented happened.
“I beg your pardon, dear Martin,” said his father.
Helen was engaged next morning in the fragrant labour of picking sweet-peas, when a maid came out of the house to say that Lord Yorkshire was there. Her father and Martin she knew were both out, and she went in to see him, concealing from herself the quite perceptible thrill of pleasure that the announcement had given her. She was, as usual, hatless, and her hair was in golden disarray from the breeze, and as she went towards the house she took off her gardening gloves, trying by sundry pats and pokes to give it some semblance of order. She was not very successful in this, nor need she have been, for she looked to him like some beautiful wild flower when she entered.