“If you mean that I am to leave my mother, Uncle John—”
“Hush! not your mother. My dear, you must allow others to judge for you here. Had you been her child it would have been different: but we must take thought for your best interests. Who is that driving in at the gate? Why, it is Blake already. I wonder if a second summons has been sent. He was not expected till to-morrow. This looks worse and worse, Rosalind.”
“Uncle John, if you will let me, I will run in another way. I—don’t wish to meet Mr. Blake.”
“Hallo, Rosalind! you don’t mean to say that Charley Blake has ever presumed— Ah! this comes of not having a mother’s care.”
“It is nothing of the kind,” she cried, drawing her hand violently from his arm. “He hates her because she never would— Oh, how can you be so cruel, so prejudiced, so unjust?” In her vehemence Rosalind pushed him away from her with a force which made his steady, middle-aged figure almost swerve, and darted across the park away from him just in time to make it evident to Mr. Blake, driving his dog-cart quickly to make up to the group in advance, that it was to avoid him Miss Trevanion had fled.
“How is he?” was the eager question he put as he came up to John Trevanion. “I hope I am not too late.”
“For what? If it is my brother you mean, I hear he is a little better,” said John, coldly.
“Then I suppose it is only one of his attacks,” the new-comer said, with a slight tone of disappointment; not that he had any interest in the death of Mr. Trevanion, but that the fall from the excitement of a great crisis to the level of the ordinary is always disagreeable. “I thought from the telegram this morning there was no time to lose.”
“Who sent you the telegram this morning?”
“Madam Trevanion, of course,” said the young man.