"Half-past seven," he said; "they were to start at eight, and she promised to go. I shall ask for an explanation to-night."
He rang for his servant, and desired that young man, when he appeared, to fetch him his overcoat. Mr. Johnston brought that garment, and assisted his master into it, and the captain put on his hat and gloves, and with his cane under his arm (for, of course, as an officer of the British army, it was his duty at all times to carry a cane under his arm), he set off for the cottage of my Lady Caprice.
The whole front of the pretty cottage was in a state of illumination, as he opened the little gate and walked up the gravel path, and men's shadows moved on the curtained windows as he rang the bell. Rosie, with pink ribbons in her hair, and her Sunday dress on, opened the door and showed him into the drawing-room.
"I'll tell Miss Olive you're here," she said; "she is engaged with company just now."
Captain Cavendish said nothing. He walked over to the low chimney-piece, and leaned moodily against it, as Paul Wyndham had done that rainy morning, little better than a week before. He had seen something as he came in that had not tended to raise his spirits. The dining-room door stood half-open, and glancing in as he passed, he perceived that Miss Henderson had given a dinner-party, and that the company was still lingering around the table. He saw the Rev. Augustus Tod and his sister—and the Tods were the very cream of Speckport society—Major and Mrs. Wheatly, and Mr. Paul Wyndham. That was all; but he, her betrothed husband, her accepted suitor, had known nothing of it—had never been invited!
Captain Cavendish, leaning against the mantel, listened to the laughter, and pleasant mingling of voices, and the jingling of glasses in the dining-room, and he could plainly distinguish the musical laughter of Olive, and her clear voice as she talked to her guests. He stood there for upward of half an hour, raging with inward fury, all the more fierce for having to be suppressed. Then he heard the dining-room door open, a rustle of silk in the passage, an odor of delicate perfume in the air, and then the drawing-room door opened.
Miss Henderson swept into the room, bowing and smiling as she passed him, and sinking gracefully into a low violet-velvet chair, her rosy skirts and misty white lace floating all about her like pink and white clouds, and she looked up at him with the same glance of inquiry she might have given any lout of a fisherman in Speckport, had such a person presumed to call.
"I fear I intrude, Miss Henderson," he said, suppressing, as a gentleman must, his rage. "I did not know there was a dinner-party at the cottage."
"Oh, it is of no consequence," Miss Henderson said, carelessly, toying with her watch and chain; "my guests are all friends, who will readily excuse me. Will you not take a seat, Captain Cavendish?"
"No, Miss Henderson! in a house where I am made to feel I am an intruder I must decline being seated. I believe you promised to join the sailing-party on the bay to-night, but I suppose it is useless to ask you if you are going now."