"I asked about what you wanted to know about the wedding dresses, but I couldn't make out much from the answers I got. Miss Kilfinane is to wear a white silk gown, trimmed with something or other that has a French name. Perhaps you can guess what it is. The bridesmaids are fat, freckled girls, the daughters of the parson. I think I have now given you all the particulars I can.
"I wish you and Humphrey would come down to Pudcombe in September. Tell him I can give him some fairish shooting, and will do all I can to make you both comfortable. Believe me,
"Your affectionate brother, O. P."
CHAPTER VI.
It was the evening before the wedding. In a low long room that was dark with black oak panelling, and gloomy, moreover, by reason of the smallness of the ivy-framed casement at one end, which alone admitted the daylight into it, Lord Seely sat before the hearth.
Although it was August there was a fire. There were few evenings of the year when a fire was not agreeable at Long Fells; and one was certainly agreeable on this especial evening. The day had been rainy. The whole house seemed dark and damp. A few logs that had been laid on the top of the coal fire sputtered and smoked drearily. My lord sat in a large high-backed chair, which nearly hid his diminutive figure from view, except on the side of the fireplace. His head was sunk on his breast; his hands were plunged deep into his pockets; his legs were stretched out towards the hearth; his whole attitude was undignified. It was such, an attitude as few of his friends or acquaintances had ever seen him in, for it was nearly impossible for Lord Seely to be unconscious or careless of the effect he was producing in the presence of an observer.
He was now absorbed in thought, and was allowing his outer man to express the nature of his musings. They were not pleasant musings, as any spectator would at once have pronounced who should have seen his posture, and his pursed mouth, and his eyebrows knitted anxiously under the bald yellow forehead. The entrance even of a footman into the room would have produced an instant change in Lord Seely's demeanour. But no footman was there to see his lordship sunk in a brown study.
At length he raised his head and glanced out of the window. It had ceased to rain, but the drops were still trickling down the window-panes from the points of the ivy leaves; and it was already so dark that the firelight began to throw fantastic shadows from the quaint old furniture, and to shine with a dull red glow on the polished oak panels. Lord Seely rang the bell.
"Has Mr. Errington returned?" he asked of the servant who appeared in answer to the summons.