Mr. Chandos stopped: Hickens and the footman were coming in. The soup was put on the table, and we sat down to dinner. As I moved forward from my corner, quietly and unobtrusively, looking as if I had neither seen nor heard, Lady Chandos turned to me with a start, a red flush darkening her cheeks. But I don't believe she knows, to this hour, whether I had been present during the scene, or had come in with the soup and the servants.
The dinner was eaten in almost total silence. Lady and Mr. Chandos were absorbed in their own thoughts; I in mine. The chance words of the agent, "Mr. Edwin Barley of the Oaks," had disclosed the fact that the simple-minded old man who had been so kind to me was dead, and his brother reigned in his stead, lord of all. A rich man, indeed, Edwin Barley must be. I think the servants in waiting must have seen that something was amiss; though, perhaps, the silence did not strike upon them so ominously as it did on my own self-consciousness.
You cannot have failed to note—and I think I have said it—that there was little ceremony observed in the everyday life at Chandos. Ten minutes after dinner, tea was rung for. Lady Chandos sat while it was brought in, and the dessert taken away.
"Will you oblige me by presiding at tea this evening, Miss Hereford?"
Had Lady Chandos not preferred the request at once, I should have withdrawn to my own room, with an excuse that I did not wish for any tea. How miserably uncomfortable I felt, sitting with them, an interloper, when I knew they must want to be talking together, and were wishing me, naturally, at the other end of the earth, none but myself can tell. I poured out the tea. Lady Chandos drank one sup, and rose.
"I must go to sit with Ethel, Harry. Will you come?"
"She does not want me," was his reply. And Lady Chandos left the room.
He let his tea stand until it was quite cold, evidently forgetting it: forgetting all but his own thoughts. I sat in patient silence. Awakening later out of his reverie, he drank it down at a draught, and rang the bell for the things to be taken away. As the man left the room with them, I happened to look at Mr. Chandos, who was then standing near the mantelpiece, and caught his eyes fixed on me, something peculiar in their expression.
"Mr. Chandos," I took courage to say, "I am very sorry to be in this position—an intruder here."
"And but for one thing I should be very glad of it," was his ready answer. "It is a pleasant in-break on our monotonous life."