“Oh,” she exclaimed, “it is you. I have telegraphed for Arthur. I have—telegraphed for Arthur.”
“Why?”
She gave a nervous, almost a guilty little laugh, and looked at him with puzzled discomfort.
“Why?” he repeated, looking at her with a cold scrutiny much dreaded of the parish ne'er-do-wells.
“Oh, well,” she replied, “it is only natural that I should want him at home in such a time as this—such a terrible affliction. Besides—”
“Besides,” suggested the Rector imperturbably, “he is now master of Stagholme.”
“Yes!” she said, with a simulated surprise which would scarcely have deceived the most guileless Sunday-school teacher. “I had not thought of that. I suppose something must be done at once—those horrid lawyers again.”
Her eyes were dancing with breathless excitement. To this woman excitement even in the form of a death was better than nothing. The bourgeois mind, with its love of a Crystal Palace, a subscription dance, or even a parochial bazaar, was unquenchable even after years of practice as the county lady of position.
The Rector did not answer. He stood squarely in front of her with a persistence that forced her to turn shiftily away with a pretence of looking at the clock.
“This is a bad business,” he said. “That boy ought never to have gone out there.”