"Pooh, yes. Sophia!" snorted Miss O'Donoghue, grasping Sir Adrian's arm to show herself quite ready for the march, "Sophia! We all know what she is. Why, my dear Adrian, she'll never hear the bell till it has stopped this half hour."
"Dinner," cried Rupert sharply to the butler, whom his pull of the bell-rope had summoned. And dinner being served, the guests trooped into that dining-room which was full of such associations to Sir Adrian. It was a little thing, but, nevertheless, intensely galling to Rupert to have to play second gentleman, and give up his privileges as host to his brother. Usually indeed Adrian cared too little to stand upon his rights, and insisted upon Rupert's continuing to act in his presence as he did in his absence; but this afternoon Tanty had left him no choice.
Nevertheless, as Mr. Landale sat down between the sisters, and turned smiling to address first one and then the other, it would have taken a very practised eye to discern under the extra urbanity of his demeanour the intensity of his inward mortification. He talked a great deal and exerted himself to make the sisters talk likewise, bantering Molly into scornful and eager retorts, and preventing Madeleine from relapsing into that state of dreaminess out of which the rapid succession of her recent sorrow and joy had somewhat shaken her.
The girls were both excited, both ready to laugh and jest. Tanty, satisfied to see Adrian preside at the head of the table with a grave, courteous, and self-contained manner that completely fulfilled her notions of what family dignity required of him, cracked her jokes, ate her dinner, and quaffed her cup with full enjoyment, laughing indulgently at her grand-nieces' sallies, and showing as marked a disfavour to Rupert as she deemed consistent with good manners.
The poor old lady little guessed how the workings in each brother's mind were all the while, silently but inevitably, tending towards the destruction of her newly awakened hopes.
There was silence between Sir Adrian and Rupert when at last they were left alone together. The elder's gaze wandering in space, his absent hand softly beating the table, his relaxed frame—all showed that his mind was far away from thought of the younger's presence. The relief to be delivered from the twin echoes of a haunting voice—once the dearest on earth to him—was immense. But his whole being was still quivering under the first acuteness of so disturbing an impression.
His years of solitude, moreover, had ill prepared him for social intercourse; the laughter, the clash of conversation, the noise on every side, the length of the meal, the strain to maintain a fit and proper attitude as host, had tried to the utmost nerves by nature hypersensitive.
Rupert, who had leisure to study the suddenly lined and tired lineaments of the abstracted countenance before him, noted with self-congratulation the change that a few hours seemed to have wrought upon it, and decided that the moment had come to strike.
"So, Adrian," he said, looking down demurely as he spoke into the glass of wine he had been toying with—Rupert was an abstemious man. "So, Adrian, you have been playing the chivalrous rôle of rescuer of distressed damsels—squire of dames and what not. The last one would have ascribed to you at least at this end of your life. Ha," throwing up his head with a mirthless laugh; "how little any of us would have thought what a blessing in disguise your freak of self-exile was destined to become to us!"