If he shut his eyes he could see in fancy his mother’s delicate, frail figure pass slowly down the old oaken staircase; the day of her funeral came back to him clearly in this moment of retrospection. He remembered how the boy, Mark, had wept for the loss of his gentle, suffering aunt. There had always been good in Mark’s heart, that small touch of human sympathy which was so redeeming a quality.
Valentine felt sure had he yielded to impulse, and gone direct up to his cousin at Sunstead, that this business would have been rearranged in a very little while.
Though the rift between them was very wide, and seemed to grow wider every day, Val did not allow himself to feel that the once strong bond of affection that had existed between Mark and himself could be utterly broken, and had his cousin been free now from any outside influence, Val might not have hesitated to have gone direct to the young man and in a few, plain words set the whole business right.
The very suggestion, however, of such a proceeding, under existing circumstances, was, of course, impossible.
Christina ruled with an undivided sovereignty, and Val, though his hot, quick anger rose at the knowledge of this, and of the most unworthy use this woman was putting her influence to, resolved not to allow himself to come in contact with his cousin’s wife, or to let Grace be subjected any further, if this were possible, to the keen-edged spite of one whom he regarded as being contemptible.
The dinner that night at the Dower House was a very serious matter.
Despite the champagne, and the warmth, and coziness of the surroundings, Val could not succeed in driving the white, troubled look from his sister’s face.
They talked the whole matter through in that practical, straightforward way so characteristic of them both.
“Lady Wentworth asked me if we could vacate the house about the middle of January. This leaves us very little time to fix ourselves anywhere, Val, even if we had the smallest idea where to look for a new home,” Grace had said at the commencement of the discussion.
Val resolutely thrust his own feelings into the background.