"No," Lancaster said, constrainedly.
"I'm glad we are friends again; but I was so stiff I could never have owned myself in the wrong, only that I promised to do it for her sake," added De Vere; and then he went away, and left his friend to resume the interrupted perusal of his novel.
But Lancaster tossed the folio angrily down upon the floor.
"For her sake," he replied. "She is a little coquette, after all, and I thought for an hour that—Pshaw, I am a fool! So she has fooled him to the top of his bent, too! Why did I speak to her at all? Little nettle! I might have known how she would sting! Well, well, I wish the 'small commission' were duly handed over to the housekeeper at Lancaster Park. A good riddance, I should say! So she thought that poor men were the nicest and handsomest, always? Faugh! Lucky for me that De Vere came upon the scene just then! In another minute I should have told her that I thought just the same about poor girls! So she confessed all to De Vere, and bade him apologize for her sake. Ah, ah, little flirt!" he repeated, bitterly.
[CHAPTER XVI.]
Things went on smoothly as usual at Lancaster Park after Mrs. West had given her consent to my lady's clever plan. They put Richard West's child out of their heads for awhile and began their preparations for the guests who were expected to arrive the last of May, to welcome the returning master of Lancaster Park. Mrs. West found time in the hubbub to fit up a tidy little room next her own for the little American niece who was coming to her from so far away. Then she, too, dismissed the matter from her mind, save now and then when in solitary moments she would wonder to herself what Dick West's child would be like, and if she would be old enough to put to school.
"It is lucky that I have a good store of savings," thought the lonely woman to herself. "I will find a good boarding-school for little Leonora, if she is old enough to go, and the child shall be educated for a teacher, that she may have the means of supporting herself genteelly when she grows up. It will take a good deal of money, but I will not begrudge it to poor Dick's child. He was a good-hearted, sunny-tempered lad. I only hope his child may be like him."
So she went on thinking of the child as of a very small girl indeed. Her brother-in-law's letter, with its hurried mention of "my little girl," "my little Leo," had entirely misled her. The poor dying man had had no intention of deceiving his sister-in-law. To him his darling daughter, although grown to woman's stature, was always "my little girl," and it never occurred to him, when on his dying bed he penned that hurried letter, to explain to Mrs. West that his orphan child was a beautiful young girl of eighteen, already fairly educated, and with a spirit quite brave enough to face the world alone, if need be.
So she went on thinking of Leonora West as a little girl who would be a great deal of trouble to her, and on whom she would have to spend the savings of long years; and, although she felt that she had a formidable task before her in the rearing of this orphan girl, she did not shrink from the undertaking, but made up her mind to go forward bravely in the fulfillment of the precious charge left to her by the dead.