“Well, she has quite taken my breath away, telling me she is going to be married, poor thing! and I hadn’t the least idea of it. People are so sudden in these days, in and out of an engagement before one has time to look round,”—and then Mrs Hilton began to flounder—“my dear—you must forgive me—I never meant—oh dear! I wonder whether Mr Hilton has had his paper?” The moment had come, and Claudia, although she had paled, was scarcely conscious of her companion’s distress. She was nerving herself for the expected tidings.
“Who does she say she is going to marry?” she asked, in a voice which to her own ears sounded strange and unreal.
Mrs Hilton joyfully ran to this outlet.
“I think it was a Mr Pelham—somebody, I know, that I had never heard of—but it is in the Morning Post, so we can easily see. Huish,”—to the butler—“we want yesterday’s paper.”
The news sent Claudia’s blood coursing. She found herself constantly wondering how it had come to pass, and what—for something there surely must have been—had passed between Fenwick and Helen. It almost amazed her that it did not work a revulsion in her own feelings, as it seemed to show that, at least as to one point, she had jumped to a wrong conclusion. But she tried to keep before her eyes that on the principal point there could be no such mistake—he did not love her, he did not love her; in their last interview he had not even pretended love. And though a passionate heart cried out that it might re-awaken, pitiless sense told her that the dead do not come to life again—here.
Such thoughts touched her, passed, returned, like a broken reflection on the water, while Mrs Hilton’s kindly talk gurgled on, exacting little attention. If Claudia failed in an answer, she set it down to the physical weariness of her ride, and yet, as she said afterwards, she had never liked her so much, or found her so gentle.
“You know, my dear, she rather kept me on tenter-hooks when she was here before, for, to my old-fashioned notions, she was just a little surprising, and I never quite knew what she was going to do next; but yesterday she was as nice as possible, and seemed so glad to be here again, poor thing! And she remembered all about Huish’s rheumatism, which I thought wonderful in such a young girl. We walked all over the place, and she did not say a word about cutting down more trees, so I hope she has got over that funny little craze. I asked her when she would come and stay here again, and she thanked me so nicely! She said she would like it some day, but not just yet, and of course, poor thing! it is very natural she should want a little quiet time after that sad business. I really could not have believed it of that pleasant Captain Fenwick!”
All this was spoken to Harry, who had but just returned from London, and who sat listening, his face in shade, and his arms on his knees. He was, as usual in cricket time, furiously burnt, and his laugh rang as cheerily as ever, though, his mother sometimes fancied, not so often. Now he neither laughed nor answered her, and she grew uncomfortable.
“Perhaps I shouldn’t have said that? Perhaps you would rather not have any one asked here just now? My dear boy, it is easy enough to put it off a little. On no account would I do anything you disliked.”
He laughed now. An odd little laugh.