‘By the way,’ said the Colonel briskly, seizing the first means of avoiding for a little longer the evil moment, ‘you did great execution, Joyce. I don’t know what you said to the Canon, my dear, but I think you accomplished in a minute what all the good people have been trying to do for weeks and weeks. What did you say?’
What did she say? She gave her father a wondering look. Who was the Canon, it seemed to ask, and when was yesterday? It looked a century ago.
‘That is what I like to see a woman do,’ cried the Colonel, rousing himself into enthusiasm for the sake of gaining a little time—‘not making any show, but with a word of hers showing what’s kind and right, and getting people to do it. That’s what I like to see. You have done your friends the best turn they ever had done them in their life.’
‘Was it so?’ said Joyce, with a faint smile. ‘I am very glad; but it was the Canon that was good to pay attention to the like of me.’
‘The like of you!’ cried the Colonel. ‘I don’t know the man that wouldn’t pay attention to the like of you.’ Then he got suddenly grave, being thus brought back headlong to the very subject which he had been trying to escape. ‘Oh, I was going to say,’ he added, with a look that was almost solemn— ‘I am afraid we shall miss him very much—I mean Norman Bellendean.’
‘Yes,’ said Joyce. He spoke slowly, and she had time to steady her voice.
‘Perhaps you knew before that he was going, my dear?’
‘No,’ she replied, feeling all the significance of these monosyllables, yet incapable of more.
‘I thought he had perhaps told you—at least Elizabeth—Elizabeth thought he might have told you.’
‘Why should he have told me?’ said Joyce, with an awakening of surprise.