“It was very good of you, Beauchamp, to come off so quickly,” said his sister. “I hardly expected you would be able to manage it. How did you do about your leave?”
“Oh, quite easily,” he replied. “I might have had it, you know, since the New-year if I had liked.” Here he surprised a look of curiosity on Roma’s part—a look of “I thought as much,” too, it seemed to him. It hardly suited him now for her to suspect any rival attraction at Wareborough. Lightly as he treated the remembrance of Eugenia, the idea of making use of her as he had once intended had somehow grown distasteful to him, so he went on quietly with his answer to his sister: “I have been so long away from the regiment, I wanted to be as good-natured as I could, and my only taking half my leave was a convenience to one or two of them. I meant, any way, to have come here next week, but it suited me quite as well to come sooner. I got your letter on Saturday evening, and this is only Wednesday. I did not lose much time, did I?”
“No, indeed,” responded Mrs Eyrecourt, very graciously. “I can’t tell you how glad I was to find you were coming. It is so very much nicer to have you here when the Chancellors come, particularly as they are our own relations, you know, and they would have been away by next week.”
“I can’t make out what brings them here, or where you came across them. You condescended to no explanations in your letter—you only said the Halswood Chancellors were coming. I had to think for some time before I could remember anything about them. I had almost forgotten that there was such a place as Halswood,” said Beauchamp.
“I had no idea myself of their coming, till the day I wrote to you,” replied Gertrude. “You see I wrote to Herbert Chancellor when I saw the announcement of the grandfather’s death, to con—”
“Gratulate him,” suggested Roma, for her sister-in-law had hesitated a little over her condolences.
“I wrote to him,” continued Mrs Eyrecourt, without condescending to notice the interruption, “and of course I said if ever they were in our neighbourhood I should be very much pleased to see them here. Mr Chancellor answered very civilly, and the other day I accidentally heard they were staying at Ferrivale, not twenty miles from here, so I wrote again, making my general invitation a special one, and they accepted it at once. That’s the whole story. You will see them for yourself this afternoon.”
“But who are ‘they’?” cross-questioned her brother. “Mr Chancellor and his wife and all the little Chancellors?”
“There are no little Chancellors. That is to say, only one girl of fourteen or so, besides the eldest daughter, who is out, and the son—there is only one, I thought there were two—who is at Eton,” replied Mrs Eyrecourt.
“Oh, indeed; so it is only Herbert and his wife who are coming,” said Beauchamp, as if he now knew all about it, for he had got scent at last, and wished to provoke his sister into letting him see all that was in her mind.