“I certainly said as much,” returned Arthur haughtily; and with that, either because he was really annoyed, or did not wish to be further questioned, he stepped out upon the lawn, and walked away.
“All this is very unsatisfactory, and strange, and bad,” said the baronet, after a considerable pause. “But nothing is to be got, it seems, by asking questions. We must do then the best we can for to-morrow without my mother—you Letty, assisted by Mrs Walter here, must do the honours of the Abbey in her place—and I wish to Heaven,” added he, as he turned upon his heel, “that the day was well over.”
“What a nice agreeable temper Richard has, when anything goes wrong,” observed Walter, twirling his moustaches. “I'm hanged if I don't think it's that which has driven my mother away from home. She naturally enough concludes he will be unbearable when he becomes the master.”
“Fie, fie, Walter!” said Letty. “I think it is much more that she can no longer bear to listen to the cruel things she hears her two sons say of one another. She has spoken to me of it more than once of late with tears in her eyes.”
“Well, Sir Richard has a bad temper, Letty, there's no doubt about that,” observed Mrs Walter, striking in in defence of her husband.
“Yes; yet there are many things worse than that, Rose, and mamma has been accustomed to Richard all his life; but she has had trouble upon trouble for the last six months, as I am sure you cannot deny, and it is likely in the state of health to which I know she is reduced, that she feels herself totally unequal to the part she would be expected to play to-morrow.”
“I think Mr Haldane knows more of the matter than he chooses to say,” observed Rose, at once carrying the war into the enemy's camp.
“I don't think you quite understand him,” returned Letty, executing the same strategic movement; “anything like duplicity is altogether foreign to his character.”
“He looks simple enough certainly,” remarked Rose quietly. “But I noticed that when Sir Richard asked him whether he knew, or could guess what had taken Lady Lisgard from home, he confined himself to replying that he did not know.”
Letty made no answer, but applied herself with heightened colour to the occupation in which her brothers had interrupted her. Walter smiled sardonically, thinking of certain female savages he had been reading of that morning in some paper in the Field, apropos of rifle-grooves, who were expert in propelling poisoned darts from blow-pipes; then catching sight of his handsome face in one of the mirrors with which the ball-room was wainscoted, he nodded, as though he recognised some friend he was constantly in the habit of meeting, yet was always glad to see, and sauntered out. At first, he made mechanically for the marquee, but stopping himself, not as it seemed without some contention in his own mind, he turned his steps to some other part of the Park. “No,” said he to himself gaily, “I will be a good boy. It is true, I have had devilish hard lines lately, but then it was partly deserved. How, the poor mother has had just as hard, and has not deserved them a bit. I will do nothing that can cause her trouble now—not even run the risk of a bit of harmless flirtation, for there always is a risk about that, somehow. I wonder whether Letty was right about her going away; I'm sure I can't help Richard quarrelling with me—he will do it. And then there was that matter of Moss Abraham's—upon my life it must have been very trying to the dear old lady. And then there was my affair with Rose—humph! Well, I'm very sorry, Heaven knows, if my conduct has in any way contributed to such a catastrophe; but it's something, my dear mother, let me tell you, when your troubles are of that sort that you can run away from them. What an infernal fool I have made of myself in every way!”