It was a terrible dinner for all of them; once Lucy dropped a knife, and they started, all of them, as though a bomb had screamed through the ceiling. And perhaps, to the older ones, there was nothing in it more alarming than the eyes, the startled, absorbed and challenging eyes, of Millie and Henry....
Slowly, as the dinner progressed, old Mr. Trenchard discovered that something was the matter. He discovered it as surely by the nervous laughter and chatter of Aunt Betty as by the disconcerted discomfort of his son George. His merriment fell away from him; he loved ‘Angels on Horseback’—to-night there were ‘Angels on Horseback’, and he ate them with a peevish irritation. Whatever was the matter now? He felt lost without Sarah; she knew when and why things were the matter more quickly than anyone, aware of her deafness, would consider possible. But before he was assisted from the table he was sure that the ‘something’ was connected with his dear Katherine.... The men did not stay behind to-night. In the hall they were grouped together, on the way to the drawing-room, waiting for the old man’s slow progress.
He paused suddenly beside the staircase.
“George,” he said, “George, just run up and see how Katie is. Give her my love, will ’ee?”
George turned, his face white. Mrs. Trenchard said:
“She’s probably asleep, Father. With her headache—it would be a pity to wake her.”
At that moment the hall door pushed slowly open, and there, the wind eddying behind him, his ulster up over his neck, his hair and beard wet with the rain, stood Uncle Timothy.
“Hullo!” he cried, seeing them all grouped together. But old Mr. Trenchard called to him in a voice that trembled now with some troubled anticipation:
“Why, your dinner’s soon done? Where’s the young man?”
Uncle Timothy stared at them; he looked round at them, then, at a loss for the first time in his life, stammered: “Why, don’t you know...?”