"And you have done it!" she cried, turning her grief upon the astonished boy. "You! What business had you to allure him off again in that miserable boat, once he had got home?"
"Don't trample me down, please," he indignantly returned; "I am as cut up as you can be. Hedges, hadn't you better get Lady Kirton's maid here? I think she is going mad."
"And now the house is without a master," she bemoaned, returning to her own griefs and troubles, "and I have all the arrangements thrown upon myself."
"The house is not without a master," said young Carteret, who seemed inclined to have the last word. "If one master has gone from it, poor fellow! there's another to replace him; and he is at your elbow now."
He at her elbow was Val Elster. Lady Kirton gathered in the sense of the words, and gave a cry; a prolonged cry of absolute dismay.
"He can't be its master."
"I should say he is, ma'am. At any rate he is now Lord Hartledon."
She looked from one to the other in helpless doubt. It was a contingency that had never so much as occurred to her. Had she wanted confirmation, the next moment brought it to her from the lips of the butler.
"Hedges," called out Percival sternly, in his embarrassment and grief, "open the dining-room door. We must get the hall cleared."
"The door is open, my lord."