“There is some forethought in that,” was Betty's answer. “He is not on such terms with the Duke that he can expect to be received as a casual visitor. It will require apt contrivance to arrange an interview. I wonder if he will be able to accomplish it?”
“Yes, he will,” said Lady Anstruthers. “I think he can always contrive things like that.” She hesitated a moment, and then added: “He said also that he wished to find out certain things about Mr. Ffolliott—'trifling data,' he called it—that he might be able to lay his hands on things if father came. He told me to explain to you.”
“That was intended for a taunt—but it's a warning,” Betty said, thinking the thing over. “We are rather like ladies left alone to defend a besieged castle. He wished us to feel that.” She tightened her enclosing arm. “But we stand together—together. We shall not fail each other. We can face siege until father comes.”
“You wrote to him last night?”
“A long letter, which I wish him to receive before he sails. He might decide to act upon it before leaving New York, to advise with some legal authority he knows and trusts, to prepare our mother in some way—to do some wise thing we cannot foresee the value of. He has known the outline of the story, but not exact details—particularly recent ones. I have held back nothing it was necessary he should know. I am going out to post the letter myself. I shall send a cable asking him to prepare to come to us after he has reflected on what I have written.”
Rosalie was very quiet, but when, having left the room to prepare to go to the village, Betty came back to say a last word, her sister came to her and laid her hand on her arm.
“I have been so weak and trodden upon for years that it would not be natural for you to quite trust me,” she said. “But I won't fail you, Betty—I won't.”
The winter was drawing in, the last autumn days were short and often grey and dreary; the wind had swept the leaves from the trees and scattered them over park lands and lanes, where they lay a mellow-hued, rustling carpet, shifting with each chill breeze that blew. The berried briony garlands clung to the bared hedges, and here and there flared scarlet, still holding their red defiantly until hard frosts should come to shrivel and blacken them. The rare hours of sunshine were amber hours instead of golden.
As she passed through the park gate Betty was thinking of the first morning on which she had walked down the village street between the irregular rows of red-tiled cottages with the ragged little enclosing gardens. Then the air and sunshine had been of the just awakening spring, now the sky was brightly cold, and through the small-paned windows she caught glimpses of fireglow. A bent old man walking very slowly, leaning upon two sticks, had a red-brown woollen muffler wrapped round his neck. Seeing her, he stopped and shuffled the two sticks into one hand that he might leave the other free to touch his wrinkled forehead stiffly, his face stretching into a slow smile as she stopped to speak to him.
“Good-morning, Marlow,” he said. “How is the rheumatism to-day?”