The men looked at each other.
“Stuck up, ain’t she?”
“Yes”—with immediate oblivion of all former graciousness—“so she allus was.”
The old Baroness received her daughter-in-law in a tremble of pink-spotted excitement. There were letters from Acheen—exceedingly important letters! Ursula must sit down at once and listen. Gerard had been in action. Gerard had done something wonderfully brave. He had been just a little bit wounded in doing it—oh, nothing, the merest scratch; but it happened to be the right hand, so a comrade wrote for him. He was going to be rewarded in some magnificent manner—made a colonel?—and the deed had been so very brave he would probably soon be sent home again. That was the Dowager’s reward.
“Sent home?” repeated Ursula, motionless in her chair. “Mamma, did you say he was wounded?”
“Oh, the merest scratch,” replied the Dowager, testily. “He says so himself. Ursula, you always try to make people nervous. Gerard never lied to me. And, you see, he is coming back. If he were really hurt he would never undertake so long a journey. I remember my poor dear husband”—she always avoided, if possible, saying “papa” to Ursula—“once cut his hand with a bread-knife so badly that he couldn’t use it for nearly a month.”
“Oh yes,” admitted Ursula, hastily. “Yes—yes, I dare say it is nothing. I am glad, mamma, I am glad. I am proud of him.”
“You!” replied the old Baroness, quite rudely, in a tone altogether strange. “What is he to you? When he comes back, Ursula, he will take away the Horst.”
“I dare him to do it!” said Ursula, fiercely. She drew herself up, looking down on the poor little heap of ruffles by the writing-table. Some moments elapsed before she spoke again. “I found the letter you were looking for, mamma,” she said, and her voice had grown quite gentle; “it is one from the late Prince Henry to papa.”