“I hope so, George,” said the lady with dignity, and pronouncing his Christian name with the softness peculiar to the French tongue; “and,” she added with a smile, “especially as we have company, will you oblige me—Marguerite, if you please?”
“Certainly, certainly, my dear.”
“Is that Miss Van Heldre?” said the lady, raising her glass once more. “I beg your pardon, my child; I hope you are well.”
“Quite well, thank you, Miss Marguerite Vine,” said Madelaine quietly, and her bright young face looked perfectly calm, though there was a touch of sarcasm in her tone.
“Louise, dearest, my tea a little sweeter, please.”
The meal progressed, and the stiffness produced by the entrée of the host’s sister—it was her own term for her appearance—soon wore off, the lady being very quiet as she discussed the viands placed before her with a very excellent appetite. Mrs Van Heldre prattled pleasantly on, with plenty of homely common-sense, to her host. Van Heldre threw in a word now and then, joked Louise and his daughter, and made a wrinkle on his broad forehead, which was his way of making a note.
The note he made was that a suspicion which had previously entered his brain was correct.
“He’s taken with her,” he said to himself, as he glanced at Louise and then at Duncan Leslie, who seemed to be living in a dream. As a rule he was an energetic, quick, and sensible man; on this occasion he was particularly silent, and when he spoke to either Madelaine or Louise, it was in a softened voice.
Van Heldre looked at his daughter. Madelaine looked at her father, and they thoroughly read each other’s thoughts, the girl’s bright grey eyes saying to him as plainly as could be—“You are quite right.”
“Well,” said Van Heldre to himself, as he placed a spoonful of black currant jam on his plate, and then over that two piled-up table-spoonfuls of clotted cream—“she’s as nice and true-hearted a girl as ever stepped, and Leslie’s a man, every inch of him. I’d have said yes in a moment if he had wanted my girl. I’m glad of it; but, poor fellow, what he’ll have to suffer from that terrible old woman!”