"Mama," Deleah said, holding the candle aloft to peer at her mother. Its light fell on her own charming face half hidden in the loose waves of curling black hair. "You aren't asleep, are you? Of course you aren't! I believe you lie there all night, staring into the shadows and thinking of miserable things! I wonder if it would really make things better, if you would like it very much, that she also has made up her mind to marry Mr. Gibbon!"
Deleah stared for a minute, and then she laughed; and Mrs. Day saw that she laughed whole-heartedly. "Bessie takes all my young men!" she said. "You see, mama, with the best will in the world to please you, I can't get married; so there's an end of it; and I may as well go to bed."
"Come and kiss me, dear."
Mrs. Day put a detaining arm round the girl's shoulders. "Nothing of this makes you unhappy, Deleah?"
"It only makes me want to laugh," Deleah said.
CHAPTER XXIII
Deleah Has No Dignity
A day or so after her encounter with the local magnate in the principal street of Brockenham, Deleah found herself, to her extreme surprise, on her way to the Hope Brewery, in response to a letter from Sir Francis Forcus, asking her to call on him there on a matter of business. He had named the afternoon hour in which she was released from school.
"I sent for you, because I wished to see you alone, and I thought it might be difficult to do so at your own house," Sir Francis said.
His address was more formal, his appearance more formidable than ever, she thought, as he indicated the chair in which he wished her to sit, and took his own seat, entrenched behind his writing-table, at some distance from her. "I hope it is not objectionable to you to come to me here, my own house being so far away?"