He had not. He had merely strolled round the terrace to the entrance hall. Here he picked up one of the many caps which were hanging there, and putting it on his head, walked idly away from the castle, hearing only the floating eulogy uttered by the judge of a certain well-known jockey who was, he said, the kindliest and most honourable soul that had ever pulled the favourite.
A longing had come to him to hurry as far as he could from the Castle and its company—they were hateful to him just at that instant. The shocking performance of the woman at the pianoforte, the chatter of his fellow-guests, the delicate way in which his friend Edmund Airey made the most indelicate allusions, the nisi prius jocularity of the judge—he turned away from all with a feeling of repulsion.
And yet Lord Innisfail’s cook was beyond reproach as an artist.
Harold Wynne had accepted the invitation of Lady Innisfail in cold blood. She had asked him to go to Castle Innisfail for a few weeks in August, adding, “Helen Craven has promised to be among our party. You like her, don’t you?”
“Immensely,” he had replied.
“I knew it,” she had cried, with an enthusiasm that would have shocked her daughter. “I don’t want a discordant note at our gathering. If you look coldly on Helen Craven I shall wish that I hadn’t asked you; but if you look on her in—well, in the other way, we shall all be happy.”
He knew exactly what Lady Innisfail meant to convey. It had been hinted to him before that, as he was presumably desirous of marrying a girl with a considerable amount of money, he could not do better than ask Miss Craven to be his wife. He had then laughed and assured Lady Innisfail that if their happiness depended upon the way he looked upon Miss Craven, it would be his aim to look upon her in any way that Lady Innisfail might suggest.
Well, he had come to Castle Innisfail, and for a week he had given himself up to the vastness of the Western Cliffs—of the Atlantic waves—of the billowy mountains—of the mysterious sunsets. It was impossible to escape from the overwhelming influence of the Atlantic in the region of Castle Innisfail. Its sound seemed to go out to all the ends of the earth. At the Castle there was no speech or language where its voice was not heard. It was a sort of background of sound that had to be arranged for by anyone desirous of expressing any thought or emotion in that region. Even the judge had to take it into consideration upon occasions. He never took into consideration anything less important than an ocean.
For a week the influence of the Atlantic had overwhelmed Harold. He had given himself up to it. He had looked at Miss Craven neither coldly nor in the other way—whatever it was—to which Lady Innisfail had referred as desirable to be adopted by him. Miss Craven had simply not been in his thoughts. Face to face with the Infinite one hesitates to give up one’s attention to a question of an income that may be indicated by five figures only.
But at the end of a week, he received a letter from his father, who was Lord Fotheringay, and this letter rang many changes upon the five-figure-income question. The question was more than all the Infinities to Lord Fotheringay, and he suggested as much in writing to his son.