“Philip, no doubt,” thought Hester, hastily dismissing the porter, and running up to the dining-room before her courage failed. She was not sorry that Philip would be there to act as a restraint on their meeting. Edgar’s back was towards her as she softly opened the door; and as he concluded it could be nobody but the boy, he did not dislodge his legs from the chair on which they reposed, or cease picking his strawberries. Opposite to him, sitting bolt upright, and his little face looking fierce in a pair of huge black whiskers, sat Cavendish! His start and stare first roused Edgar.
“What the deuce——” he began. “Did not you get my letter? You must have got my letter, bidding you—telling you that you might stay longer.”
“I did; but ... I will tell you all about it by and by. I beg your pardon for bursting in: but I did not know you had any one with you, except Philip. I will go up stairs till you are at liberty.”
“Aye, do.”
Before the door was well shut, however, she was called back and told that she would scarcely know her away about the house after all that the work-people had been doing. She had better come in and sit down till she could be instructed how to turn herself about in her own home. She sat down accordingly by the window, thinking it would best please Edgar that she should not be in full view of Cavendish’s face. When she had been offered wine and strawberries, and accepted the latter in consideration of her burning thirst, the two at the table seemed to have nothing more to say to each other. They dropped a few words now and then, which each left it to Hester to answer; and, in a quarter of an hour, Cavendish rose to go. Edgar whispered with him for some time outside the door, and then, to his wife’s terror, came in and shut it. She could not help fixing her eyes upon his, though there was anger in his face.
“You are displeased with me for coming home,” said she. “And I dare say it was very foolish, and you will think me very unkind: but O! Edgar, you cannot think how uneasy I have been since yesterday morning! Those bank-notes——”
“What of them?” asked Edgar, looking steadily at her.
“Mr. Pye said they were bad: that is, he said that one of them was bad——”
Edgar laughed violently. “So you have taken a journey——”
“I know what you will say.... I know how easy it is to make a laugh of it,” said Hester, sinking into tears: “but Mr. Pye showed me,——Edgar!” and she put a strong momentary control upon her convulsive sobs, “Edgar, they are all bad,—all that I have left.”