‘You’ve seen my lady in danger, my lord.’
‘Yes; well, there ‘s no one to resemble her there, she has her mark—kind of superhuman business. We’re none of us “fifty feet high, with phosphorus heads,” as your friend Mr. Gower Woodseer says of the prodigiosities. Lady Fleetwood is back—when?’
‘Before dark, she should be.’
He ran up the steps to the house.
At Lekkatts beneath Croridge a lean midday meal was being finished hard on the commencement by a silent company of three. When eating is choking to the younger members of the repast, bread and cold mutton-bone serve the turn as conclusively as the Frenchman’s buffet-dishes. Carinthia’s face of unshed tears dashed what small appetite Chillon had. Lord Levellier plied his fork in his right hand ruminating, his back an arch across his plate.
Riddles to the thwarted young, these old people will not consent to be read by sensations. Carinthia watched his jaws at their work of eating under his victim’s eye-knowing Chillon to be no longer an officer in the English service; knowing that her beloved had sold out for the mere money to pay debts and support his Henrietta; knowing, as he must know, that Chillon’s act struck a knife to pierce his mother’s breast through her coffin-boards! This old man could eat, and he could withhold the means due to his dead sister’s son. Could he look on Chillon and not feel that the mother’s heart was beating in her son’s fortunes? Half the money due to Chillon would have saved him from ruin.
Lord Levellier laid his fork on the plate. He munched his grievance with his bit of meat. The nephew and niece here present feeding on him were not so considerate as the Welsh gentleman, a total stranger, who had walked up to Lekkatts with the Countess of Fleetwood, and expressed the preference to feed at an inn. Relatives are cormorants.
His fork on his plate released the couple. Barely half a dozen words, before the sitting to that niggard restoration, had informed Carinthia of the step taken by her brother. She beckoned him to follow her.
‘The worst is done now, Chillon. I am silent. Uncle is a rock. You say we must not offend. I have given him my whole mind. Say where Riette is to live.’
‘Her headquarters will be here, at a furnished house. She’s, with her cousin, the Dowager.’