“Don’t look so distressed, dear; she shall hear nothing about it, and don’t suppose I am the sort of person to be frightened at things of the kind! Not that it doesn’t interest me. You must tell me all about it—some other time. But, of course, it would not do to risk a panic among the servants, and—oh, here they come—the men, I mean!”
They all entered the room as she spoke, Horace bringing up in the rear. Catching sight of the as yet ungreeted guests, he crossed at once to his mother’s sofa, and shook hands with Betty, his face lighting up as he did so, but solemn was no word for the glance with which he was greeted, as Betty instinctively crept a little closer to her hostess.
“I shall die of fright,” she thought to herself, “if Mr Ryder Morion speaks to me. And I’m so afraid Mrs Littlewood will introduce him. I feel as if he must know all the horrid things we’ve said of him behind his back ever since we were old enough to know there was such a person. And now if he knew that I’ve just been telling Mrs Littlewood stories against this place! I wonder which he is?” she went on, for her prejudice against the owner of Craig-Morion was strongly mingled with curiosity.
Her first guess fell on a good-looking, brown-haired, rather florid young man, to be, however, almost instantaneously dismissed on hearing him addressed as Hilton or some such name. And then her eyes, straying a little further, lighted on an older, darker man, less “smart” perhaps, but with something about his general bearing more calculated to arrest her attention. He was speaking to Madeleine—no, to Frances—no, after all he seemed to be more engrossed by a very pretty, beautifully dressed young woman, whom Betty, never having seen before, could not identify as Lady Leila Bryan.
“How can she? Oh, how dare she talk in that easy, merry sort of way to that grave-looking man?” she thought to herself. “I am sure he is Mr Morion, and he’s awfully frightening looking; even if he weren’t himself I should think him so. Oh, I beg your pardon,” she said aloud, with a start, as she became aware that Horace Littlewood was speaking to her, had, in fact, addressed her two or three times, without succeeding in obtaining her notice; “were you speaking to me?” she went on, while her face grew crimson.
He looked down at her with a curious expression, in which both amusement and annoyance might have been detected. Betty thought it bespoke but contempt, and her confusion increased.
“It was nothing—nothing of the slightest consequence,” he replied. By this time his mother was engaged in talking to Mr Charlemont. “I was only asking you if you would care to accompany us on a raid into the library, and that part of the house. Mr Morion—Ryder—says it is years and years since he entered it, and Bryan is interested in old books, so I’ve had it lighted up. I thought,” and here his expression grew significative, “perhaps you would like to see—the library for once at night, in cheerful company.”
Betty’s face, as she took in the proposal, was a curious study. In spite of what she had just been saying to Mrs Littlewood, the grim strange room which she had never thoroughly explored had a strong fascination for her. Sometimes when she woke in the night to a fit of tremors, her imagination would picture to itself the long, black, tree-shrouded aisle leading from the old church to the deserted wing of the mansion.
“Perhaps,” she would say to herself, “at this very moment she is creeping out at that door, down those steps, to pace up and down the Laurel Walk;” and then, too frightened even to call out to Eira, she would bury her head in the clothes, only to dream, when she did manage to fall asleep again, of the poor old ghost, for whom, in spite of her terror, she always felt an irrepressible pity. And all this of course had been much more defined since the evening when they had met the vicar in the church, and heard from him more particulars of the heretofore vague old family legend.
Joined to these private sensations was the wish to fall in with any suggestion of Mr Littlewood’s. She got up almost with a spring.