“I’m very happy indeed, and I’m sure Humphrey is—he said so, and he always tells the truth. And if you please, sir, aunt and I will go now into the housekeeper’s room.”
“That you won’t, if I have any influence with some one here,” said Pratt. “No, my pretty little wife; you and your brick of a husband shall go off in triumph; and oh, by Jove! here’s the present I brought down for you.”
Frank Pratt’s present was a handsome ring, and he was placing it above the plain one already on her finger, when Humphrey came back.
“She’s all right again,” he said, huskily. “I was obliged to come away, for she wanted to go on her knees—and I couldn’t stand it. Polly—Aunt Price—she wants you both. Master Dick, sir, isn’t this a day?”
Conclusion.
Everybody said, as a matter of course, afterwards, that the whole affair was perfectly absurd, and that anybody could see with half an eye that Humphrey was not a Trevor. All the same, though, he had been accepted for many months as the owner of the estate.
The young couple went off on their wedding trip, for Mrs Lloyd’s illness was of only a transitory nature; and soon after the carriage had taken them to the station, the old housekeeper sent a message to Trevor, asking leave to see him.
What took place at that interview Richard Trevor never said; but the result was that a couple of hours after she and her husband had left the place, having refused Trevor’s offer to let them stay, though living on his bounty to the end.
In writing, it needs but a stroke of the pen to carry the reader now to a year ago or the reverse; so let us say that a year has elapsed, and there is once more a dinner-party at Penreife, where there are visitors staying. It is to meet them that Sir Hampton and Lady Rea are coming from Tolcarne. One of the visitors is with her sister beneath one of the shady trees on the lawn; and the other, a little solemn-looking man, her husband, has been making a tour of the place with Richard Trevor.