“Harry Bent must know.”
“No, no, John. You know what his people are, stiff-necked, conventional, purse-proud, always boasting of their lineage. Until Netty is married! Wait till then.”
“I don’t know what to do,” moaned the broken man, bursting into tears, and sinking into his chair at the table.
“Be guided by me, John. The dead can’t feel, while the living can be condemned to lifelong torture.”
“Have your own way,” he groaned. “I don’t know what to do. I shall never hold up my head again.”
“Oh, yes, you will, John, and—there is always 160 my shoulder to rest it upon, dearest. Let me comfort you.”
Netty Swinton sat before the drawing-room fire, curled up on the white bearskin rug with a book in her hand, munching biscuits. Netty was generally eating something. Her eyes were red, but she had not been weeping much, and, as she stared into the embers, her pretty, expressionless little mouth was drawn in a discontented downward curve.
She was in mourning—and she hated black. Netty was thinking ruefully of Dick’s disgrace that had fallen upon the family, and wondering anxiously what the effect would be upon Harry Bent and his relations, when a knock at the front door disturbed her meditations, and presently, after a parley, a visitor was announced—although visitors were not received to-day, with Mrs. Swinton lying ill upstairs, and the rector shut up alone in his study.
“Miss Dundas.”