The dinner invitation to Mr and Lady Emma Morion was duly sent, and duly—declined, though with all the expressions of regret that courtesy could demand. Mr Morion’s expected bronchitis was still hovering about somewhere—ready to pounce upon him, or, so at least, he believed, which in the present instance served the purpose quite as well. For Lady Emma did not care to spend an evening at the big house without a daughter, and was glad of a civil excuse. She had not “taken to” the new Mrs Littlewood, and in her secret heart—the home of more genuine maternal pride and affection than would easily have been believed—it was to this new influence that she attributed the fact of none of her daughters being included in the invitation.
And with this interchange of notes the more formal intercourse between the two houses practically ceased. Mr Morion called on the younger Mrs Littlewood in spite of the sword of Damocles, in the shape of bronchitis, hanging over him, and seemed, on the whole, to have been more favourably impressed by her than were the ladies of his family—possibly because she had taken more pains in his case that it should be so.
As regarded Madeleine, however, things were quite different; that is to say, they remained to the last on the old familiar footing. As often as was possible for her, she made her escape from Craig-Morion during her sister-in-law’s visit, if but for half-an-hour or so at a time, to her friends at Fir Cottage, where she was always welcomed with the same affection that on her side brought her thither. But she seemed, for her, almost dull and depressed, and, when taxed with this by Eira, tried to evade any definite reply, attributing it only to her regret at leaving and that circumstances should have so interfered with the pleasant conditions of things previous to “the Conrads’” appearance on the scene.
“If they had come earlier in the winter,” she said, “it wouldn’t have mattered so much. We should have had time to get over it again before this, and I should have had Horace to back me up at home. As it is I really feel like a caged bird sometimes, mentally as well as physically. I couldn’t stand much more of it, and I know that nothing would be so foolish as any sort of ‘squabbling’ among us.”
“And they are staying longer than you expected?” inquired Frances.
“Yes, indeed, a whole week longer,” was the reply; “they only leave two days before we go ourselves. They seem to have rather taken a fancy to the place. Elise is becoming quite interested in family lore. She should have applied to some of you on the subject.”
She did not add, as she might have done, that her sister-in-law had announced on more than one occasion that such matters were of no real interest to so very remote and junior a branch of a family, for Madeleine was the very reverse of a mischief-maker, and, much as she would have appreciated the full sympathy of her friends had she entered more into detail as to the difficulties of her present position, she even blamed herself for the little she had allowed herself to say.
“And your brother Horace,” said Eira, “is not coming back at all?”
“I am afraid not,” was the reply, with an unmistakable sigh, which it took some self-restraint on Eira’s part not to echo.
A sort of cloud seemed to be falling over the brightened life at Fir Cottage again. The day before that of Madeleine’s leaving, when she ran in to say good-bye, it was all that Eira at least could do, not to speak of her sisters, to repress the tears very near her eyes—tears in which disappointment, as well as the natural regret in parting with their friend, had no small part.