"Then this was what Leonard and he were settling last night," thought Christabel. "Your master went out with Mr. Hamleigh, I suppose," she said to the servant.
"No, ma'am, my master is in his study. I took him his breakfast an hour ago. He is writing letters, I believe."
"And the other two gentlemen?"
"Started for Bodmin in the wagonette at six o'clock this morning."
"They are going to see that unhappy man hanged," said Miss Bridgeman. "Congenial occupation. Mr. Montagu told me all about it at dinner yesterday, and asked me if I wasn't sorry that my sex prevented my joining the party. 'It would be a new sensation,' he said, 'and to a woman of your intelligence that must be an immense attraction.' I told him I had no hankering after new sensations of that kind."
"And he is really gone—without saying good-by to any of us," said Dopsy, still harping on the departed guest.
"Yes, he is really gone," echoed Jessie, with a sigh.
Christabel had been silent and absent-minded throughout the meal. Her mind was troubled—she scarcely knew why; disturbed by the memory of her husband's manner as he parted with Angus in the corridor; disturbed by the strangeness of this lonely expedition after woodcock, in a man who had always shown himself indifferent to sport. As usual with her when she was out of spirits, she went straight to the nursery for comfort, and tried to forget everything in life except that Heaven had given her a son whom she adored.
Her boy upon this particular morning was a little more fascinating and a shade more exacting than usual; the rain, soft and gentle as it was—rather an all-pervading moisture than a positive rainfall—forbade any open-air exercise for this tenderly reared young person—so he had to be amused indoors. He was just of an age to be played with, and to understand certain games which called upon the exercise of a dawning imagination; so it was his mother's delight to ramble with him in an imaginary wood, and to fly from imaginary wolves, lurking in dark caverns, represented by the obscure regions underneath a table-cover—or to repose with him on imaginary mountain-tops on the sofa—or be engulfed with him in sofa pillows, which stood for whelming waves. Then there were pictures to be looked at, and little Leo had to be lovingly instructed in the art of turning over a leaf without tearing it from end to end—and the necessity for restraining an inclination to thrust all his fingers into his mouth between whiles, and sprawl them admiringly on the page afterwards.
Time so beguiled, even on the dullest morning, and with a lurking, indefinite sense of trouble in her mind all the while, went rapidly with Christabel. She looked up with surprise when the stable clock struck eleven.