"Well, we shall see," he said encouragingly. "But at least you will not hurry away? You will stay with us until Reggie comes home? Go to my sister and tell her so. Will you?"
"If you wish it," Deleah said.
Miss Forcus, who under no circumstance could have been cold or inhospitable, received the intimation that Deleah was to stay until Reginald came home with less than accustomed warmth.
"Of course, my dear! You know I hated the thought of your going; but why is it to be for Reggie especially? Were you and Reggie such friends?"
Deleah admitted without enthusiasm that they were certainly friends.
"Then, no doubt he will be glad to see you," Miss Forcus said, and thought to herself that now she was going to have the daughter of a felon for her sister-in-law.
By way of solace to her family pride she turned from the impending, disastrous marriage of the step-brother to that satisfying alliance her own brother had made. The daughter of a baronet had been his wife—the sister-in-law of a peer. The baronet was a banker, and rich. If the little son had lived he would have inherited his grandfather's fortune which now had gone to the son of Lord Brace. Lord Brace, who was an Irish peer, wanted the money more than Francis, certainly, who had a sufficient fortune of his own, even without that considerable one his wife had received from her mother, and had left to him.
All such facts, which Ada Forcus generally accepted as a matter of course, she now produced for the benefit of Deleah, meekly counting the stitches of the Madonna lily, which when worked in beads, grounded in amber silk and framed in gold, would be converted into a screen, to hang on the marble mantelpiece in the Cashelthorpe drawing-room.
About the wife whom Sir Francis had loved and lost, who had lived for two years in this beautiful home, sitting to read, and eat, and sew, in her husband's company, walking the gardens by his side, cared for and tended and watched over by him, Deleah had dreamed many dreams. Beautiful as an angel she had pictured her, and with an angel's nature, to be so loved, so inexpressibly mourned by him. She had dreamed dreams, but had asked no questions. She asked them now.
"Was she so very beautiful—Lady Forcus?"