"Late? Not at all! Go to bed, Denton, at once; Miss Fountain will be here directly."
"I'm not sleepy; I can wait for her," said the housekeeper, advancing a step or two into the hall. "You mun be tired, sir, and should take your rest."
"I'm not the least tired, thank you. Good-night. Let me recommend you to go to bed as quickly as possible."
Mrs. Denton lingered for a moment, as though in hesitation, then went with a sulky unwillingness that was very evident to her master.
Helbeck laid down his book on his knee with a little laugh.
"She would have liked to get in a scolding, but we won't give her the chance."
The reverie that followed was not a very pleasant one. He seemed to see Miss Fountain in the large rustic room, with a bevy of young men about her—young fellows in Sunday coats, with shiny hair and limbs bursting out of their ill-fitting clothes. There would be loud talking and laughter, rough jokes that would make her wince, compliments that would disgust her—they not knowing how to take her, nor she them. She would be wholly out of her place—a butt for impertinence—perhaps worse. And there would be a certain sense of dragging a lady from her sphere—of making free with the old house and the old family.
He thought of it with disgust. He was an aristocrat to his fingers' ends.
But how could it have been helped? And when he remembered her as she stood there in the hall, so young and pretty, so eager for her pleasure, he said to himself with sudden heartiness:
"Nonsense! I hope the child has enjoyed herself." It was the first time that, even in his least formal thoughts, he had applied such a word to her.