“Oh, Walter, don’t take it like that! If father settles upon doing this, it will be because both together they have decided that it is the best.”
“And no one asks what I think,” cried the lad, “though after all it is I—” He stopped himself with an effort, and without another word swung out again, leaving the door vibrating behind him. And the girls looked at each other with faces suddenly clouded. Fifty looks to twenty so remote an age, so little to be calculated upon. After all, it was Walter, not Mr. Penton, who was the heir. And no one asked what he thought!
The door of the book-room closed upon the negotiations which were of such importance to the family. There came a hush upon the house—even the winterly birds in the trees without, who chirped with sober cheerfulness on ordinary occasions, were silent to-day, as if knowing that something very important was going on. Those who passed the door of the book-room—and everybody passed it, the way of each individual, whatever he or she was doing, leading them curiously enough in that direction—heard murmurs of conversation, now in a higher, now in a lower key, and sometimes a little stir of the chairs, which made their hearts jump, as if the sitting were about to terminate. But these signs were fallacious for a long time, and it was only when dinner was ready, the early dinner, with all its odors, which it was impossible to disguise, that the door opened at last. The three young people were all about the hall-door, Walter hanging moodily outside, the two girls doing all they could to distract his thoughts, when this occurred. They all started as if a shell had fallen amongst them. By the first glimpse of Mr. Penton’s face they were all sure they could tell what had been decided upon. But they were not to have this satisfaction.
“Tell your mother,” he said, keeping in the shade, where no one could read his countenance, “to send in a tray with some luncheon for Mr. Rochford and me.” And then the door closed, and the discussion within and the mystery and anxiety without continued as before.
CHAPTER XIII.
MAN AND WIFE.
“However it goes,” said Mr. Russell Penton, “I don’t think you can help taking some notice of the young people. In the first place it is right, but that I allow does not count much in social matters; and next it is becoming and expedient, and what the world will expect of you, which is of course much more important.”
“Gerald,” said his wife, “what have I done to make you speak to me like that?”
“I don’t know that you have done anything, Alicia. It is of course your affair rather than mine. But I think it is hard upon your cousins. It is like that business about the birthright, you know—you have got the mess of pottage, and they—the other thing, half sentimental, half real.”
“I wonder at you, Gerald,” cried Mrs. Penton. “What true sentiment can they have in the matter? They never lived here; their immediate ancestors never lived here. False sentiment, if you like, as much of that as you like, but nothing else; and the real advantage will be immediate, as you know.”
“Yes, I know. I never said it was the sentiment of acquisition; it is the sentiment of personal importance, which perhaps is even more telling. Apart from Penton they will feel themselves nobodies.”