IN WHICH OBEDIAH ARRIVES.
n the meantime our worthy little Lieutenant Puddock—by this time quite reconciled to the new state of things, walked up to Belmont, with his head a great deal fuller—such and so great are human vagaries—of the interview pending between him and Aunt Becky than of the little romance which had exploded so unexpectedly about a fortnight ago.
He actually saw Miss Gertrude and my Lord Dunoran walking side by side, on the mulberry walk by the river; and though he looked and felt a little queer, perhaps, a little absurd, he did not sigh, or murmur a stanza, or suffer a palpitation; but walked up to the hall-door, and asked for Miss Rebecca Chattesworth.
Aunt Becky received him in the drawing-room. She was looking very pale, and spoke very little, and very gently for her. In a reconciliation between two persons of the opposite sexes—though the ages be wide apart—there is almost always some little ingredient of sentiment.
The door was shut, and Puddock's voice was heard in an indistinct murmur, upon the lobby. Then there was a silence, or possibly, some speaking in a still lower key. Then Aunt Becky was crying, and the lieutenant's voice cooing through it. Then Aunt Becky, still crying, said—
'A longer time than you think for, lieutenant; two years, and more—always! And the lieutenant's voice rose again; and she said—'What a fool I've been!' which was again lost in Puddock's accents; and the drawing-room door opened, and Aunt Rebecca ran up stairs, with her handkerchief to her red nose and eyes, and slammed her bed-room door after her like a boarding-school miss.
And the general's voice was heard shouting 'luncheon' in the hall; and Dominick repeated the announcement to Puddock, who stood, unusually pale and very much stunned, with the handle of the open drawing-room door in his hand, looking up toward the bed-room in an undecided sort of way, as if he was not clear whether it was not his duty to follow Aunt Becky. On being told a second time, however, that the general awaited him at luncheon, he apprehended the meaning of the message, and went down to the parlour forthwith.
The general, and my lord Dunoran, and Miss Gertrude, and honest Father Roach, were there; and Aunt Becky being otherwise engaged, could not come.
Puddock, at luncheon, was abstracted—frightened—silent, for the most part; talking only two or three sentences during that sociable meal, by fits and starts; and he laughed once abruptly at a joke he did not hear. He also drank three glasses of port.