Up in London there had been sleet and rain, but down here in the country it was dry, flaky snow that was falling, whispering against their faces not unpleasantly, and covering them with a thin white veil.
“Yesterday, just after you had gone,” Grace continued, “I had a visitor. I had barely got home from the station, and was giving Joseph some orders in the hall when there came the sound of carriage wheels, and a loud peal at the bell, and before I knew where I was, Val, I found myself face to face with Lady Wentworth.”
Val said “Ah!” and that was all; but the exclamation was full of significance.
“You can imagine my astonishment,” Grace said, clinging to her big brother, and pouring out all her story with a childlike eagerness. “I am afraid I forgot my manners for a few seconds, I was so surprised; but, of course, I soon recovered, and I asked her into my little room and ordered tea just as if she were in the habit of coming every day. She was quite as much at her ease, and she took the most comfortable chair, and drank the tea with the air of a queen; but I saw her eyes going round my little snuggery, and somehow everything seemed suddenly to look old and shabby. What strange eyes she has, Val,” Grace said, with a faint shiver. “They are so beautiful, and yet so cold and hard.”
“What did she want?” asked Valentine, after he had piloted his sister round a rather bleak corner, and they were within a stone’s throw of their home.
“Oh! something very simple in her view of the matter. But to me——” Grace could not help her voice breaking for a moment. “Val, she wants the Dower House. She wants our dear old home. She—she barely gives us time to pack our things and get out of it. She wants it in such a hurry!”
By the light of one of the old-fashioned lanterns slung from one of the old walls Grace saw her brother’s face. It was very stern, white and fixed, as though in pain. The next instant it changed as the man, looking down, caught the tears in his sister’s eyes, and the unhappiness of her expression.
“My poor little Gracie. This is awfully hard on you!” he said, tenderly.
“And on you, too, dear,” the girl answered.
She was silent a moment; then she said, quietly: