“How unselfish you are!” said his grandmother, with a smile, however, that somewhat belied the satire of her words. “She is my god-daughter; I have duties and responsibilities with regard to her.”
Philip murmured something inaudible. But Lady Cheynes took no notice.
“You shouldn’t keep the horse waiting, Phil,” she said. “It is bitingly cold.”
“Good-bye then, till—dinner-time, I suppose?” he said as he went off.
He felt slightly dissatisfied. “Granny” had not seemed as pleased to see him as she usually was after an absence; she had asked him nothing about matters at Grimswell, where he had really been working hard, and “going into things,”—the rectifying of abuses, the setting a-foot new benevolent schemes, and so on—with fervour and energy which he had scarcely known he possessed. He could and would of course talk it all over with Granny when he got her to himself, that very evening probably, but still—no, she had not been quite herself that morning, she was “carried” and constrained. Perhaps there were troubles at Coombesthorpe which he had not heard of; his grandmother had spoken rather snappishly of Madelene.
“I do believe it’s all that child,” was the conclusion at which the young man finally arrived. “I must get it all out of Granny and help to smooth things a little if I can. I wonder,”—was his next thought—“I wonder if Maddie noticed that girl or knew who she was.”
He found the lawyer at home, but somewhat surprised to see him. Sir Philip explained to him his unexpected return. Mr Brander, who had known him from his infancy, pricked up his ears at the prospect of a little local gossip.
“So you were in time for the Manor dance, Sir Philip. A very successful affair I hear. My nephew,”—Mr Brander had a brother who ranked among the small squirearchy—“my nephew looked in this morning on his way home; he slept at his sister’s—and he was full of it. He was telling me all the details. I was delighted to hear that Lady Cheynes chaperoned her nieces herself, though sorry to hear of the Colonel’s illness.”
Philip looked surprised.
“Oh no,” he said, “my cousins were staying in the house. What put it into my lady’s head to go I’m sure I don’t know, but it was not as chaperone to any one.”