“You look as if you had enjoyed your walk, Frances,” was her mother’s remark. “You have got such a nice colour,” mentally adding to herself, “really Frances grows handsomer and handsomer as she gets older. Her eyes have such a bright expression,”—little suspecting the tears those eyes had so recently shed, still less those which had been repressed with so much resolution. “I have never thought them as fine as Betty’s, but somehow Betty doesn’t look like herself now-a-days,” and she gave a little sigh. “Where is Betty?” she asked aloud.
Frances glanced at Lady Emma quickly. Now and then there seemed a curious tacit sympathy between the mother and daughter, just now this struck the latter, for she herself was feeling anxious about her younger sister.
“She is coming in a moment,” said Eira, with a slight nervousness unusual to her. “Shall I run and tell her that tea is ready?”
There was no need for a reply. Betty herself came in. She was looking pale, but to a superficial observer the traces of tears had already disappeared. Her dark eyes with their even darker fringes were not easily disfigured. Tea-time passed quietly and more quickly than when Mr Morion was present. For this Frances was grateful, as it left her the sooner at liberty.
“I am going up to the vicarage,” she said, as she left the room. “I had a little commission for Mrs Ferraby in the village.”
Ten minutes later she rang at the vicarage bell, and handed in the small parcel she had brought. When she got back to the gate again, she stood still for a moment in hesitation.
“I wonder if by chance the church is open,” she thought. “I should like to go in there for a few minutes. I don’t think I have ever been there alone since the afternoon Eira was so startled;” and with a rather sad smile, “I don’t think anything would startle me to-day.”