"No—only it is not amusing! If Augustina or I could speak for the other side—that would be more fun!"
"Laura!" cried Augustina, scandalised.
"Oh, I know you wouldn't, if you could," said the girl gayly. "And I can't. So there it is. One can't stop you, I suppose!"
She threw back her bright head and turned to Helbeck. The action was pretty and coquettish; but there was a touch of fever in it, nevertheless, which did not escape the stranger sitting opposite to her. Brother Williams raised his down-dropped lids an instant. Those brilliant eyes of his took in the girl's beauty and the change in Helbeck's countenance.
"You shall stop what you like," said Helbeck. A mute conversation seemed to pass between him and Miss Fountain; then the Squire turned to his sister, and asked her cheerfully as to the merits of a new pony that she and Laura had been trying that afternoon.
* * * * *
After dinner Helbeck, much troubled by the pinched features and pale cheeks of his guest, descended himself to the cellar in search of a particular Burgundy laid down by his father and reputed to possess a rare medicinal force.
Mr. Williams was left standing before the hearth, and the famous carved mantelpiece put up by the martyr of 1596. As soon as Helbeck was gone he looked carefully—furtively—round the room. It was the look of the peasant appraising a world not his.
A noise made by the wind at one of the old windows disturbed him. He looked up and was caught by a photograph that had been propped against one of the vases of the mantelpiece. It was a picture—recently taken—of Miss Fountain sitting on the settle in the hall with the dogs beside her. And it rendered the half-mocking animation of her small face with a peculiar fidelity.
The young man was conscious of a strong movement of repulsion. Mr. Helbeck's engagement had sent a thrill of pain through a large section of the Catholic world; and the Jesuit had already divined a hostile force in the small and brilliant creature whose eyes had scanned him so coldly as she sat beside the Squire. He fell into a reverie, and took one or two turns up and down the room.