CHAPTER XXII
Exits and Entrances
MISS CARRINGTON’S dignified house was shaken out of its settled monotony.
Helen Abercrombie was going home. Her father, the ex-governor, was coming for her; he was to pass a night under his old friend’s roof, and them resume his way, taking with him his handsome daughter to entertain for him guests of political importance. George Lanbury had arranged to travel with them. He had stayed on at the Cleavedge Arms to receive formally the ex-governor’s acceptance of him as his future son-in-law.
Miss Carrington herself was decidedly shaken in health; her nerves were on edge, her digestion a misnomer, and her heart was acting badly.
It had been a trial almost beyond bearing that Kit had laughed at her attempt to control his marriage—had good-humouredly, but decidedly, flouted her hint of punishment for disobeying her or reward for his obedience. She had for so long been ensconced behind her pride and paramount will that it was a disintegrating shock to discover that she might be regarded merely as one of the many prejudiced elderly women in the world whose prejudices should be kindly tolerated as long as they affected nothing in particular, but which were to be put down when they overflowed this barrier.
She raged to discover that Kit considered her views silly whims, that the worst that she could do to him was a featherweight in comparison with Anne Dallas; most unbearable of all, that her rage accomplished nothing but to throw her into greater impotence.
Kit had brought Helen’s father from the station; he went down with Noble to meet him.
The ex-governor was a man of soldierly bearing, with keen eyes, a drooping white moustache, useful in concealing the expression of his lips, and thick, prematurely white hair. Helen looked like him. His face was not less that of a citizen of the world than hers, but something—years or nature—modified in him the hardness that impaired his daughter’s beauty.
Kit ushered ex-Governor Abercrombie into the library and went in search of his aunt. He returned to say: