CHAPTER XVI
Early in January Mr. Howard returned from Spain. Had he been able to follow his own inclinations, he would have gone straight to Cumberland in order to look after his property, and confer with his agent on some matters of importance; but he received such an urgent summons from Lady Osborne that he did not like to disregard it, and went down into Surrey.
As he entered the beautiful drawing-room of the Castle, where everything was so familiar to him, and Lady Osborne, so entirely in keeping with her surroundings, came forward to greet him, with a slight flush upon her face, he could not but feel how good it was to be once more at home.
They sat together by the wide hearth, and it seemed to him that in the soft light of the candles she might well pass for ten years less than her age, but as a matter of fact a stranger might well have taken her for but little older than himself; in her beauty there was something so soft and fair.
They had been chatting of one thing and another—principally of Lady Edward Sothern, and the wedding—when suddenly it occurred to him that he had not enquired for Lord Osborne, and, to his amazement, learned that he was in Paris.
"Upon my word I do not understand him," he said, rising to his feet, and leaning against the mantelpiece. "When we were in Italy he was for ever playing the rôle of lonely exile, and pining for his native land!"
He looked down at Lady Osborne, and she coloured.
"I was particularly anxious to speak to you about him," she replied. "It is on account of his disappointment with Miss Watson. She has definitely refused him."
"But what could have induced him to ask her when she is the betrothed of another?"