Lilias was following her, but her father called her back. “You need not both go, my dears,” he said with sudden remembrance of unwritten letters awaiting him in his study, which must be seen to before four o’clock post-time. “Perhaps Captain Beverley would like to have a look at the church again, if you will take him to see it. I will follow you in a few minutes, but I have a letter or two I must finish, which I was forgetting.”
“Pray don’t let me interrupt you,” exclaimed Captain Beverley, with anxiety almost disproportionate to the occasion. “I should very much like to look at the church, for there are some tablets there I want to examine. And if Miss Western will explain them a little, I shall be very much obliged.”
Lilias hesitated. “Mary understands them better than I do,” she began, but her father interrupted her.
“I will send her after you, if you go on, and I will finish my letters as quickly as I can, and then, Captain Beverley, I shall be at your service. Mrs Western tells me you want to hear about Joseph Owen. You will stay and—I can’t say dine with us—we are very uncivilised, you see; we have a mongrel meal at six!”
He spoke with a slight nervousness, which made Lilias’s cheek grow hot. “Poor dear father!” she ejaculated, mentally. But the guest seemed blissfully unconscious of his host’s hesitation.
“You are very kind indeed,” he said, eagerly. “I should very much like to stay, if I shall not be a trouble. It is so wretchedly dull and uncomfortable at the Edge, I don’t think I could have stood it much longer, unless—if you had not taken pity on me,” he added, laughingly, as Lilias led the way across the grass to the old church.
Mary joined them there in a few minutes, and while Captain Beverley was examining the old coat-of-arms on the tablet in memory of his ancestress, she found time to whisper to her sister,—
“Mamma knows that papa has asked him to stay to tea. I don’t think she minds much.”
“But what will there be for tea?” said Lilias, in consternation.
“Oh! that will be all right,” replied Mary, reassuringly.