‘I meant the fair one,’ he gasped, ‘her sister.’
‘She! Ah! looks rather consumptive,’ replied Maurice, heartlessly.
The Borcel End and Manor House families met in the churchyard after the service—Borcel End respectful, and not intrusive—the Manor House kindly, cordial even, with no taint of patronage. In sooth, Michael Trevanard was the best tenant a landowner could have; a man who was always improving his holding, and paid his rent to the hour; a man to take the chair at audit dinners, and stumble through a proposal of his landlord’s health.
‘You didn’t expect to see us so soon, did you, Mrs. Trevanard?’ said Madge, with her bright smile; ‘but we all grew tired of town in the middle of the season.’
‘We’re always glad to see you back,’ said Michael, screwing up his courage, and jerking out the words as if they were likely to choke him. ‘The place doesn’t seem homelike when there’s no family at the Manor House. You see we were accustomed to see the old Squire pottering about the place from year’s end to year’s end, and entering into every little bit of improvement we made; and as familiar, you know, as if he was one of ourselves. That spoiled us a bit, I make no doubt.’
‘It shall not be my fault if you do not come to consider me one of yourselves in good time, Mr. Trevanard,’ said Churchill kindly—kindly, but without that real heartiness which makes a country gentleman popular among his vassals.
Maurice was standing in the background, and it was only at this moment that Mr. Penwyn recognised him. Something like a spasm of pain changed his face for a moment, as if some unwelcome memory were suddenly brought back to him.
‘Natural enough,’ thought Maurice. ‘The last time we met was at his cousin’s funeral, and it is hardly a pleasant idea for any man that he stands in the shoes of the untimely dead.’
That momentary flush of pain past, Mr. Penwyn welcomed the stranger in the land with exceeding cordiality.
‘How long have you been in Cornwall, Mr. Clissold?’ he asked. ‘You ought not to come to Penwyn without putting up at the Manor House.’