'I am sure she will,' said Jacinth. 'I don't feel any anxiety about that.'
'Nor do I,' said her aunt.
Just then the luncheon gong sounded, and they all went down-stairs in the best of spirits. In the dining-room they were joined by Frances and Eugene, who thanks to the genial influences of the morning's news, ran up to Miss Mildmay, and kissed her much more effusively than was usual with them.
'How well you are both looking!' she said, and Lady Myrtle glanced round, pleased at the remark. 'I don't think his mother will recognise Eugene,' Miss Mildmay went on. 'Well, no, she could scarcely do that in any case. But I mean to say I think she will find it difficult to believe we are not cheating her altogether when she sees this great, strong, rosy fellow. He was such a poor little specimen!'
'He must have been brought home in time, however,' said Lady Myrtle. 'Ah, yes, our Indian possessions cost us dear in some ways. Though it is nothing to the old days; my people were soldiers for generations you know, so we had full experience of these difficulties. I and my brothers were born in India; my father was only captain in his regiment when he came into the Elvedon title and property unexpectedly. He would have lived to be very distinguished, I feel sure, if he had not left the army;' and she sighed a little.
'But you have distinguished relatives in the army still,' said Miss Mildmay. 'The Captain Harper who was wounded at——after his most gallant conduct. He is a relation, is he not? I heard about him from Miss Scarlett: you know his daughters were at Ivy Lodge, and'——
'Indeed!' said Lady Myrtle, and a very strange expression came into her voice—not annoyance, not even constraint—more like a sort of repressed anxiety and painful apprehensiveness. 'Indeed! No, I do not remember—what were you going to say?'
For Miss Mildmay had stopped abruptly. She was seated opposite Jacinth, and as she got to her last words, some consciousness made her glance across the table at her elder niece. In an instant she saw her mistake, and recalled her own vague warnings to the girls to avoid allusions to Lady Myrtle's family history. But she was far from cowardly, and essentially candid. And in her mind there had been no mingling of any selfish motive; nothing but the desire to prevent any possible annoyance to their kind old friend had prompted her few words of advice to the girls. And now the strange look—a look almost of restrained anger—on Jacinth's face positively startled her.
'I may have been mistaken in my impression that the family in question was in any way related to you,' she said quietly. 'One should be more cautious in such matters.'
'Yes,' said Lady Myrtle, nervously, 'I think you must have been mistaken. I do not know anything of such people, and Harper is not a very uncommon name. By the way, that reminds me—was it you, my dear?' and she turned somewhat abruptly to Frances—'was it not you who once mentioned some school-fellows of the name, and afterwards something was said which removed the impression that they could possibly be Elvedon Harpers? I am confused about it.'