Archery, dancing, promenading, and talking took up the afternoon, and then came the banquet. Altogether it must have cost Caromel’s Farm a tidy sum.
“It is well for you to be able to afford this,” cried the Squire confidentially to Nash, as they stood together in one of the shady paths beyond the light of the coloured lanterns, when the evening was drawing to an end. “Miles would never have done it.”
“Oh, I don’t know—it’s no harm once in a way,” answered Nash, who had exerted himself wonderfully, and finished up by drinking his share of wine. “Miles had his ways, and I have mine.”
“All right: it is your own affair. But I wouldn’t have done one thing, my good friend—sent an invitation to your mother-in-law.”
“What mother-in-law?” asked Nash, staring.
“Your ex-mother-in-law, I ought to have said—Mrs. Tinkle. I wouldn’t have done it, Caromel, under the circumstances. It pained her.”
“But who did send her an invitation? Is it likely? I don’t know what you are talking about, Squire.”
“Oh, that’s it, is it?” returned the Squire, perceiving that the act was madam’s and not his. “Have you ever had those particulars of Charlotte’s death?”
Nash Caromel’s face changed from red to a deadly pallor: the question unnerved him—took his wits out of him.
“The particulars of Charlotte’s death,” he stammered, looking all abroad. “What particulars?”