"Oh! ah! Shotover," he said, over his shoulder, "I don't want to hurry you, my dear boy, but perhaps it would be as well if you'd just go round to the stables and take a look at the horses."
Then, as the gentleman addressed moved away, escorted by his host and followed in admiring silence by Godfrey Ormiston, he repeated, almost querulously:—"Foolish things mysteries. Nothing in them, as a rule, when you thrash them out. Mares' nests generally. And that reminds me, I hear young"—Lord Fallowfeild's air of worry became accentuated—"young Calmady's got home again at last."
"Yes," Mrs. Cathcart said, "Richard and his mother have been at Brockhurst nearly a month."
"Have they, though?" exclaimed Lord Fallowfeild. He fidgeted. "It's a painful subject to refer to, but I should be glad to know the truth of these nasty, uncomfortable rumours about young Calmady. You see there was that question of his and my youngest daughter's marriage. I never approved. Shotover backed me up in it. He didn't approve either. And in the end Calmady behaved in a very high-minded, straightforward manner. Came to me himself and exhibited very good sense and very proper feeling, did Calmady. Admitted his own disabilities with extraordinary frankness, too much frankness, I was inclined to think at the time. It struck me as a trifle callous, don't you know. But afterwards, when he left home in that singular manner and went abroad, and we all lost sight of him, and heard how reckless he had become and all that, it weighed on me. I give you my word, Mrs. Cathcart, it weighed very much on me. I've seldom been more upset by anything in my life than I was by the whole affair of that wedding."
"I am afraid it was a great mistake throughout," Mrs. Cathcart said. She folded her plump, white hands upon her ample lap and sighed gently.
"Wasn't it, though? So I told everybody from the start you know," commented Lord Fallowfeild.
"It caused a great deal of unhappiness."
"So it did, so it did," the good man said, quite humbly. He looked crestfallen, his kindly and well-favoured countenance being overspread by an expression of disarmingly innocent penitence.—"It weighed on me. I should be glad to be able to forget it, but now it's all cropping up again. You see there are these rumours that poor, young Calmady's gone under very much one way and another, that his health's broken up altogether, and that he is shut up in two rooms at Brockhurst because—it's a terribly distressing thing to mention, but that's the common talk, you know—because he's a little touched here"—the speaker tapped his smooth and very candid forehead—"a little wrong here! Horrible thing insanity," he repeated.
At this point Dr. Knott, who had been watching first one person present and then another from under his shaggy eyebrows with an air of somewhat harsh amusement, roused himself.
"Pardon me, all a pack of lies, my lord," he said, "and stupid ones into the bargain. Sir Richard Calmady's as sane as you are yourself."