Miss Catheron smiled once more, a smile more stinging than words.
"No doubt. You have many things yet to learn, I am quite sure. Victor, tell your wife that, however dulcet her voice may be, it would sound sweeter if not raised so very high. Of course, it is to be expected—I make every allowance, poor child, for the failings of her—class. The dressing-bell is ringing, dinner in an hour, until then—au revoir."
Still with that most insolent smile she bows low once more, and in her gold silk, her Spanish laces, her diamonds and splendor, Miss Catheron swept out of the room.
And this was Ethel's welcome home.
* * * * *
Just two hours later, a young man came walking briskly up the long avenue leading to the great portico entrance of Catheron Royals. The night was dark, except for the chill white stars—here under the arching oaks and elms not even the starlight shone. But neither for the darkness nor loneliness cared this young man. With his hands in his pockets he went along at a swinging pace, whistling cheerily. He was very tall; he walked with a swagger. You could make out no more in the darkness.
The great house loomed up before him, huge, black, grand, a row of lights all along the first floor. The young man stopped his whistling, and looked up with a smile not pleasant to see.
"Four years ago," he said, between his teeth, "you flung me from your door like a dog, most noble baronet, and you swore to lodge me in Chesholm jail if I ever presumed to come back. And I swore to pay you off if I ever had a chance. To-night the chance has come, thanks to the girl who jilted me. You're a young man of uncommonly high stomach, my baronet, proud as the deuce and jealous as the devil. I'll give your pride and your jealousy a chance to show themselves to-night."
He lifted the massive brass knocker, and brought it down with a clang that echoed through the house. Then he began whistling again, watching those lighted, lace-draped windows.
"And to think," he was saying inwardly, "to think of our little Ethel being mistress here. On my word it's a lift in life for the soap-boiler's pretty daughter. I wonder what they're all about up there now, and how Inez takes it. I should think there must have been the dickens to pay when she heard it first."