At the Grange breakfast was just over. The General looking his best—so Mrs. Kemp assured herself with wifely pride—in his white riding breeches and grey coat, stood by the window of the pretty room opening out on to the lawn.
"I think it's time you went up and dressed, Lucy. You know it's a good way to Whiteways, and we don't want the horses blown."
Lucy looked up obediently from a letter she was reading, "Yes, father, I'll go up at once. It won't take me long to dress."
The girl would have given much to have been allowed to stay at home. But she knew that her doing so would probably mean the giving up on the part of her mother of one of the few local festivities which Mrs. Kemp heartily enjoyed. Even more, Lucy feared her father's certain surprise and disappointment, followed, after the first expression of these feelings, by one of those ominous silences, those tender questioning glances she had come to look for and to dread.
General Kemp was treating his daughter with a consideration and gentleness which were growing daily more bitter to Lucy. The poor child wondered uneasily what she could have done to make her father see so clearly into her heart. She would have given much to hear him utter one of his old sharp jokes at her expense.
Nothing was outwardly changed in the daily life of the village, Chancton had been rather duller than usual. Mrs. Rebell's back had been seen at church in the Priory pew, but she had gone out, as she had come in, by the private door leading into the park. Mrs. Boringdon had been away for nearly a fortnight, staying with an invalid sister, and so there had been very little coming and going between the Cottage and the Grange, although the Kemps and Oliver had met more than once on neutral ground.
To-day, as Lucy well knew, was bound to be almost an exact replica of that first day out last autumn. Then, as now, it had been arranged that Mrs. Boringdon should drive Mrs. Kemp to Whiteways; then, as now, Lucy and her father were to ride there together, perhaps picking up Captain Laxton on the way. But, a year ago, Oliver Boringdon had ridden to the meet in their company, while this time nothing had been said as to whether he was even going to be there. A year ago, the day had been one full of happy enchantment to Lucy: for her father had allowed her to follow the hounds for over an hour, with Boringdon as pilot, and he,—or so it seemed to the happy girl,—had had no eyes, no thought for anyone else! The knowledge that to-day would be so like, and yet, as a subtle instinct warned her, so unlike, was curiously painful.
Still, no thought of trying to escape from the ordeal entered Lucy's mind. But mothers—such mothers as Mrs. Kemp—often have a sixth sense placed at their disposal by Providence, and the girl's mother divined something of what Lucy was thinking and feeling.
"I wonder," she said, "if you would rather stop at home? You look tired, child, and you know it is a long way to Whiteways, and a rather tiring experience altogether! Of course I should go just the same."