"Thank you. I shall be downstairs again as soon as I have taken Miss
Fountain to my sister—and I, too, should be glad of some breakfast."
"He's been agate all night," said the housekeeper to herself, as she entered the study and looked at the chairs, the lamp which its master had forgotten to extinguish, the open window. "An where's she been? Who knows? I saw it from the first. It's a bewitchment—an it'll coom to noa good."
She went about her dusting with a shaking hand.
* * * * *
Augustina was not told till later in the day. When her brother, who was alone with her, had at last succeeded in making her understand that he proposed to make Laura Fountain his wife, the surprise and shock of the news was such that Mrs. Fountain was only saved from faintness by her very strongest smelling-salts.
"Alan—my dear brother! Oh! Alan—you can't have thought it out. She's her father's child, Alan, all through. How can you be happy? Why, Alan, the things she says—poor Laura!"
"She has said them," he replied.
"She can't help saying them—thinking them—it's in her. No one will ever change her. Oh! it's all so strange——"
And Augustina began to cry, silently, piteously.
Helbeck bent over her.