On leaving the place, which the company did at an early hour, I saw that he accompanied her and her mother to the railway station. The three rode back in the same fly. We all returned to Slough in the same train; I going on to London. From the carriage in which I sat I could see Miss Mainwaring’s pony-phaeton, with the page at the pony’s head, and close by a dog-cart with a groom in the Harding livery. Before the train started I saw the ladies step into the phaeton, Nigel Harding climbing to the seat behind them, while “buttons” was dismissed to take his seat in the dog-cart. With their freight thus assorted, the two vehicles drove off, just as the train was slipping out of the station.
From what I had seen that day, and what I had heard under the great cedar tree, and, more than all, from what I knew of both parties to the suit, I had made up my mind before reaching London, that Belle Mainwaring was booked to be the better-half of Nigel Harding—if consent could be squeezed out of his father either by fraud or by force.
Chapter Twenty Three.
Dissimulation.
On that same night, as upon almost every other of the year, General Harding was seated in his dining-room with a decanter of crusted port on his right hand, a glass a little nearer, and a Phillipine cheroot between his teeth. His maiden sister was on his left, round a corner of the table, upon which stood before her another wine-glass, with an épergne of flowers, and a hand-dish containing fruit. It was the hour after dinner, the cloth had been removed, the dessert decanters set upon the table, and the butler and footmen had retired.
“It’s just nine,” said the General, consulting his chronometer-watch, “Nigel should be back by this. He wasn’t to stop for dinner—only luncheon—and the train leaves Reading at 7:16. I wonder if those Mainwarings were there?”
“Pretty sure to be,” replied the ancient spinster, who was shrewd at conjectures.
“Yes,” thoughtfully soliloquised the General, “pretty sure, I suppose. Well, it don’t much matter, I’ve no fear for Nigel; he’s not the sort to be humbugged by her blandishments, like that hot-headed simpleton, Hal. By my word, sister! it is very strange we’ve not heard a word from the lad since he left us.”