“I don’t see that you can help writing,” said Evelyn. “The not doing so would be only too marked. And it isn’t as if the property were entailed; it is all actually nothing more to you than to any one else.”
So Captain Headfort wrote—a short, manly letter of honest sympathy—a letter which, however, in the months that followed, he often more than half regretted, though he was too generous to say so to Evelyn. For it brought forth no response, not even a formal acknowledgment.
“No doubt,” he thought to himself, “they looked upon it as a piece of officiousness. However, it was done for the best, and I’ll think no more about it.”
Two years later saw Evelyn obliged to return to England with her children, for her health had suffered to some extent from the climate, and little Marmaduke—Bonny, as he was called—was growing thin and pale. She had been with her own people for several months, when at last the coming of the little-looked-for invitation to visit Wyverston was announced to her by her husband, as has been related. Nothing could have been more unexpected, Captain Headfort having had no communication till now with his cousins. He was even at a loss to explain their knowing of his wife’s return home. And naturally he was anxious to respond cordially to this friendly overture; anxious, perhaps, above all, that no considerations of misplaced economy should prevent Evelyn’s making her début among his relatives with befitting dignity.
Hence the sensation in the Raynsworths’ family circle concerning an event, on the surface, so simple and commonplace. And no one, perhaps, of all the family party had taken the matter so deeply to heart as Philippa. It was never out of her head during the few days which succeeded her return home, and by night her dreams were haunted by absurd complications and variations of the theme.
As to Duke’s wife herself, the younger sister had no misgivings whatever.
“Evelyn may be shy,” she thought, “but she is never awkward. She can always be stately if occasion calls for it. And her clothes will be all right; indeed, she looks nice in anything, though I do wish she had some one to help her to put them on. Yes, it is the going without a maid that spoils it all. I don’t know what can be done!”
For the previous day had destroyed the last hope of a temporary maid being procurable, and Evelyn, with the touch of laisser-aller inherent in her, and which her life in India had not tended to decrease, had made up her mind to face Wyverston unattended.
“If only you keep quite well, it won’t matter so much,” said Mrs Raynsworth.
“I shall take care not to let the Headforts know, if I don’t,” said Evelyn. “I should hate them to think that Duke had married a limp, delicate sort of a girl, and, unluckily, I always look much more so than I am.”