“There has been no inconvenience. We are so many that one more or less does not matter. We have treated her without ceremony, as one of the family—”
“And made her very happy, evidently,” said Russell Penton. “She is very unwilling to come away.”
And then there was a pause. That Mab Russell, the heiress, should be treated as one of the family by these poor Pentons was to Alicia a reversal of every rule which she could scarcely accept without a protest. “It must have been a glimpse of life very different from anything she has been accustomed to,” she said at last.
“Yes, poor little thing! with no brothers or sisters of her own.”
“She has compensations,” said Russell Penton, with a glimmer of humor in his eyes. But Lady Penton looked at him without any response in hers. He was so surprised at this, and bewildered that Mab’s value should not be known, that involuntarily, out of the commotion in his own mind, he put a question which seemed full of meaning to the troubled listeners. “I don’t see your son,” he said.
The father and mother exchanged a miserable look. “It is known, then,” their eyes said to each other: and in spite of herself the blood rushed to Lady Penton’s face and then ebbed away again, leaving her faint and pallid; but she made an effort at a smile. “Walter,” she said, “is not at home. He is going to Oxford in a month or two, and he is away for a little.”
“Taking a holiday?” suggested Russell Penton, with a curious consciousness, though without any understanding, of trouble in the air.
“Oh, it is rather—business,” said the mother. Sir Edward did not change that aspect of severe gravity which he had borne all the time. He had too much set wretchedness in his face to change as she did. “You have been more good to him,” she continued, glad of the excuse which justified her trembling voice, “more good than words can say.”
“I have no right to any credit: I only carried out my father’s wishes,” said Mrs. Penton. How severe her tone was! how clear that she was aware that Walter, the recipient of her kindness, had shown himself unworthy! If anything could have made these poor people more unhappy it was this—that their precautions seemed useless and their trouble known.