She almost overdid it; even Frank looked up, struck by the strange unfamiliar monotone in which she spoke.
“But he is coming back again. He is certain to come back again, Frank? Tell me, isn’t he quite certain to come back again?” asked Sydney, with a quick, painful eagerness in her voice, as if entreating Frank not to answer no.
He stared at her for a moment, he did not understand her. Had he done so, he might have softened the bluntness of his reply, for he was far from callous or hardhearted to suffering in any shape.
“How interested you seem in his movements, Sydney. I have always thought you didn’t particularly like him. You’ve changed your opinion rather suddenly, surely? Come back again? No, it is very unlikely indeed that he will ever come back again. The 203rd is sure to leave Bridgenorth before Captain Chancellor’s leave is over, and, of course, the Wareborough detachment will go too. The regiment has been quite its time here. Chancellor was aide-de-camp to his cousin, General Conyers, somewhere in Ireland, till he came here—that’s how he happened to be so short a time here.”
“And where will the regiment go to?” inquired Sydney. The words seemed to form themselves mechanically on her lips; a strange feeling came over her that it was really Eugenia, not herself, who was speaking.
“Goodness knows,” answered Frank. “Oh, yes, by-the-bye, I remember Chancellor saying they were next on the roster for foreign service. He said, a few months would see him in India, unless he sold out. I shouldn’t much wonder if he did. I shouldn’t much wonder if—” he hesitated. For the first time a slight misgiving seemed to come over him; he looked up in some little embarrassment. Eugenia was sitting perfectly still, looking just as usual. He felt reassured.
“If what?” asked Sydney, again with the same feeling of being forced by the intensity of her sister’s anxiety to continue putting these questions against her own will.
“Oh, nothing,” said Frank. “That is to say, it is only a fancy of mine that there may be something between Chancellor and that handsome Miss Eyrecourt. His cousin, isn’t she? I never saw her, but he had rather a constrained way of alluding to her, I noticed, and he had half-a-dozen photographs of her in different attitudes and dresses.”
“I should think it very likely,” said somebody—for the moment Sydney actually did not recognise the voice as her sister’s. “I wonder if papa wants any tea, Sydney. I think I’ll go and see.”
She rose from her seat almost as she spoke, walked quietly to the door, and left the room.