‘No, I am not making peace, for we never made war,’ said Mab, who had given her cousin a warm grasp of the hand. And she stood at the gate looking after them with some regret. For Lord Will was young, and they were of the same blood, and he was a great novelty, something far more new than even Leo Swinford. She was unfeignedly sorry that he was going away. And she could not understand why, nor how it was that the young man who was so cordial yesterday should be so cold again now.
Lady William stood as she had done when young Pakenham dropped her hand until Leo Swinford, following his friend, had closed the door of the little drawing-room. I think she heard through the open window all that Mab said—at all events, the laugh so full of merriment and spontaneity bursting out into the pleasant air. Then she suddenly sank into the chair, and covering her face with her hands fell into a sudden burst of silent weeping. There was no sound, but her shoulder heaved with the effort to control and subdue the sudden emotion. Mr. Plowden had been standing, too, perplexed and disappointed by the stranger’s sudden withdrawal, but a little consoled by the laugh which seemed to prove that there was at all events a good understanding between Mab and her cousin. He did not perceive for a moment the effect upon his sister, and it was only after the young man had gone out of the garden gate, that, turning to speak to her, he perceived the attitude of abandonment, the restrained but almost irrestrainable passion by which she had been seized. He was not so much afraid of seeing women cry as men less experienced are. But Emily had never been of the weeping kind, and the Rector was startled and touched by the sight of the paroxysm with which she was struggling, to keep it down.
‘Emily,’ he cried, ‘Emily, my dear, what is it? You’re not breaking down?’
‘James,’ she cried, but very low, suddenly lifting to him a face full of anguish and exceedingly pale, ‘if we should not be able to prove it; if we can’t get the evidence! Oh James, my Mab, my child!’
‘Why shouldn’t we be able to prove it?’ he said, with half-angry calm. ‘Where is the difficulty of proving it? and what has that to do with it? Why, Emily, I never knew your good sense fail you before.’
‘My good sense!’ she said, with a miserable smile.
‘To be sure! Why, what is there to cry about? Such an unexpected windfall to Mab—a fortune, no doubt, though he did not tell us how much. You cut the young man short, Emily. I can’t see why. He seemed a very civil young man.’
Lady William raised herself up and dried her wet eyes.
‘You are quite right,’ she said, ‘it is my common sense that is failing me, James.’
‘Failed you for a moment,’ he said, indulgently patting her on the shoulder. For to be a man with a wife and daughters of his own he was very fond of his sister; and he was also agreeably excited by the sight of the second Lord William, actually one of the Portcullis family, Mab’s own cousin, about whom the ladies of the Rectory, when they heard, would be so deeply excited. Mr. Plowden was anxious to convey that wonderful intelligence to them as quickly as was possible. ‘Well, my dear Emily,’ he said, ‘I must go. I have no doubt you’ve been a good deal excited this morning, and I should advise you to lie down and rest a little. And to-morrow—well, no, perhaps not to-morrow, for now I remember, I have some churchings and various other things to attend to, but the very first free day I have——’