To which, detaining the messenger while she wrote, Mrs. Mortomley replied,
"Dear Lenny,—Ere this, you will have received my note written last night concerning your Christmas present, so I need say no more on that subject. But oh! Lenny, how could you steal such a march upon me?
"Yes, I will promise what you ask. We will leave London the moment we can do so, and remain away as long as possible—if it rested with me, for ever. I have no desire to remain here—I shall have none to return here.
Always yours,
Dolly.
"Rupert dragged Archie about last night with the idea of doing him good, till he was quite exhausted, and the consequence is that he does not feel nearly so well this morning. Good-bye, a merry Christmas to you, my dear, and many, and many happy new years."
For Dolly, whatever the new year might hold in store, she made a very pleasant Christmas for herself and others in that small house at Clapton. Miss Gerace had sent up a hamper filled with farm-house produce to her niece, and that hamper was supplemented by another filled with game shot in Dassell woods.
The three—Rupert, Mortomley and Dolly—consequently sat down to as nice a little dinner as could have been furnished at Elm Park, whither Rupert was invited to eat turkeys and mince pies. But he preferred for reasons of his own holding high festival with his uncle and aunt, and Dolly rewarded him by proving as gracious and pleasant a hostess in adversity as she had often been in the days of her prosperity.
The change Mrs. Werner beheld had been wrought almost under Rupert's eyes by a process so gradual that it failed to affect him as it had touched her friend.
He saw she grew thinner and paler. He knew she was more silent and thoughtful than of old. He heard her laugh had lost its ringing clearness, and that her smile, once so bright and sunny, had something of a wintry gleam about it, but these changes were but the natural consequence of what she had gone through, the legitimate scars left from wounds received during the course of that weary battle which had been fought out bravely if foolishly to the end.
She could be pleasant and lively enough still, he decided, as she talked and laughed while nibbling like a squirrel as he suggested, the walnuts he prepared for her delectation.
Aye, and she could be wise and strong too, he thought as he met her brown eyes fixed gravely on his, while she solemnly touched his wine-glass with her own, and hoped in a tone, which was almost a prayer, that the coming year might prove a happier and more prosperous one to them all.