"They say he hasn't a shilling left," continued the General, but stopped short when he caught the flash of Satanella's eye, under its dark, frowning brow.
"I dare say he'll pull through," said she bitterly, "and disappoint his dearest friends, after all."
"I'll engage he will, Miss Douglas!" exclaimed Macormac's hearty voice from the end of the table. "It's yourself wouldn't turn your back on a friend, lose or win. Take a glass of that claret, now. It'll not hurt ye. Here's the boy's health, and good luck to him! A pleasanter fellow, to my mind, never emptied a bottle, and a better rider never sat in a saddle, than he's proved himself this day!"
Norah would have liked to jump up and hug papa's handsome white head in her embrace on the spot, but Lady Mary had been watching the girl to-night with a mother's anxiety, and fearful lest her daughter should betray herself if subjected to further trial, gave the signal rather prematurely for the ladies to withdraw.
While they trooped gracefully out, the gentlemen were still discussing Daisy's defeat, and the catastrophe of the Great United Service Handicap.
Everybody knows what men talk about when left alone after dinner; but none, at least of the rougher sex, can venture to guess the topics with which ladies beguile their seclusion in the drawing-room. Whatever these might be, it seems they had little interest for Mrs. Lushington, whose habit it was to retire for ten minutes or so to her own chamber, there, perhaps, to revise and refresh her charms ere she descended once more upon a world of victims.
Her bedroom was gorgeously furnished, supplied with all the luxuries to which she was accustomed; but the windows did not shut close, and a draught beneath the door lifted the hearth-rug at her fire-place; therefore she made but a short stay in her apartment, stealing softly down-stairs again, so as to be well settled in the drawing-room before the gentlemen came in.
Traversing the library, she heard Lady Mary's voice carrying on, as it seemed, a subdued, yet sustained conversation, in a little recess adjoining, which could hardly be called a boudoir, but was so far habitable, that in it there usually stood a lamp, a chess-board and a card-table. Mrs. Lushington would not have listened, be sure, to save her life, but the Dublin Evening Mail lay close at hand on a writing-table. She became suddenly interested in a Tipperary election, and the price of pigs at Belfast.
Lady Mary's accents were low, grave, even sorrowful. It was difficult to catch more than a sentence here and there; but, judging by the short, quick sobs that replied to these, they seemed to produce no slight effect on the other party to the conversation.
Mrs. Lushington smiled behind her paper. What she heard only confirmed what she suspected. Her eyes shone, her brow cleared. She felt like a child that has put its puzzle together at last.