The colonel frowned again, and turned his back upon the speaker.
"Aileen," he said, haughtily, "as Sir Rupert is not visible, nor likely to be for some time, perhaps you had better not linger. To-morrow, after the funeral, I shall speak to him very seriously."
Miss Jocyln arose. She would rather have lingered, but she saw her father's annoyed face, and obeyed him immediately. She bent and kissed the cold, white face, awful with the dread majesty of death.
"For the last time, my friend, my mother," she murmured, "until we meet in heaven."
She drew her veil over her face to hide her falling tears, and silently followed the stern and displeased Indian officer down stairs, and out of the house. She looked back wistfully once at the gray, old ivy-grown façade; but who was to tell her of the weary, weary months and years that would pass before she crossed that stately threshold again.
It was a very grand and imposing ceremonial that burial of Lady Thetford; and side by side with the heir, clad in deepest mourning, walked the unknown painter, Guy Legard. Colonel Jocyln was not the only friend of the family shocked and scandalized on this occasion. What could Sir Rupert mean? And what did Mr. Legard mean by looking ten times more like the old Thetford race than Sir Noel's own son and heir?
It was a miserable day, this day of the funeral, with a low complaining wind sighing through the yew-trees, and a dark, slanting rain lashing the sodden earth. There was a sky of lead hanging low like a pall; and it was almost dark, in the rainy gloaming, when Colonel Jocyln and Sir Rupert Thetford stood alone before the village church. Lady Thetford slept with the rest of the name in the stony vaults; the fair-haired artist stood in the porch looking at the slanting lines of rain, and Sir Rupert, with a face wan, and stern, in the dying daylight, stood face to face with the colonel.
"A private interview," the colonel was repeating; "most certainly, Sir Rupert. Will you come with me to Jocyln Hall? My daughter will wish to see you."
The young man nodded, went back a moment to speak to Legard, and then followed the colonel into the carriage. The drive was a very silent one—dark gloom lay on the faces of the two men. A vague, chilling presentiment of impending evil on the Indian officer, as he uneasily watched the young man who had so nearly been his son.
Aileen Jocyln, roaming like a restless ghost through the lonely rooms, saw them alight, and came out to the hall to meet her betrothed. She held out both hands shyly and wistfully, looking up, half in fear, in that rigid death-white face of her lover.