“Is what true?” asks the other, with an air of assumed innocence.
“That you’ve caught the richest heiress in Herefordshire, or she you, or each the other, as Russel had it, and which is best for both of you. Down on your knees, Ryecroft! Confess!”
“Major Mahon! If you wish me to remain your guest for another night—another hour—you’ll not ask me aught about that affair nor even name it. In time I may tell you all; but now to speak of it gives me a pain which even you, one of my oldest, and I believe, truest friends cannot fully understand.”
“I can at least understand that it’s something serious.” The inference is drawn less from Ryecroft’s words than their tone and the look of utter desolation which accompanies them. “But,” continues the Major, greatly moved, “you’ll forgive me, old fellow, for being so inquisitive? I promise not to press you any more. So let’s drop the subject, and speak of something else.”
“What then?” asks Ryecroft, scarce conscious of questioning.
“My little sister, if you like. I call her little because she was so when I went out to India. She’s now a grown girl, tall as that, and, as flattering friends say, a great beauty. What’s better, she’s good. You see that building below?”
They are on the outer edge of the rampart, looking upon the ground adjacent to the enceinte of the ancient cité. A slope in warlike days serving as the glacis, now occupied by dwellings, some of them pretentious, with gardens attached. That which the Major points to is one of the grandest, its enclosure large, with walls that only a man upon stilts of the Landes country could look over.
“I see—what of it!” asks the ex-Hussar.
“It’s the convent where Kate is at school—the prison in which she’s confined, I might better say,” he adds, with a laugh, but in tone more serious than jocular.
It need scarce be said that Major Mahon is a Roman Catholic. His sister being in such a seminary is evidence of that. But he is not bigoted, as Ryecroft knows, without drawing the deduction from his last remark.