CHAPTER VI. MR WITHERS WITHDRAWS HIMSELF.
WHEN Derrick and the captain met at the breakfast-table upon that Derby morning, there was a note for the latter waiting by his plate. It had been brought over from the Turf Hotel with apologies, having been detained there by mistake, “through everybody being so busy,” for at least a week. As he turned it moodily over without opening it, Ralph saw that it had the Mirk postmark.
“You have a letter from home, I see, lad; lucky dog!”
“Yes, very lucky,” replied the young man cynically, as he ran his eye over the contents; “worse than my infernal luck of last night, and only less than the misfortune I am looking for to-day is the news in this letter.”
“How is that, lad?”
“Well, you will hear some day.”—Here he took the note, and slowly tore it lengthways into thin strips, and then across, so that it lay in a hundred fragments.—“But it's a secret, at least it was until a week ago, but being in a woman's hands, of course she let it slip;” and Master Walter looked as near to “ugly” as it was possible for his handsome face to go.
“I fancied your folks at home were unaware of your having intended to be at the Turf Hotel, and rather thought you were with your regiment, like a good boy.”
The captain returned no answer; but Derrick, who was in excellent spirits notwithstanding the anxieties of the coming day, continued to address him in that healthy and cheerful strain which is the most intolerable of all manners to one who is melancholy, and what is worse, in dread suspense. “Now, for my part, Walter, any letter in a woman's hand, as I think yours is—nay, you foolish lad, if you hadn't stuffed it into your breast-pocket so quickly, I protest I should have thought it had come from your mother or your sister. Why, you don't mean to say that that pretty little gate-keeper down at Mirk writes letters to handsome Master Walter?”
“And why not?” asked the captain defiantly. “If it had come from Mistress Forest, then, indeed, you might have taken upon yourself to object, although I understand that even there, you have not yet obtained the position of bridegroom-elect.”
“No,” returned Derrick drily. “I was about to say that I should have welcomed any letter in a woman's hand, especially if it began: 'My dearest '“——