“It was to be expected there should be a difference,” said Sir Edward. “You were but a girl when you went away. I hope you are going to make a good long stay. You will find us just as quiet as ever, and as humdrum, but very delighted to see you.”
To this Winnie made no reply. She neither answered his question, nor gave any response to his expression of kindness, and the old man sat and looked at her with a deeper wrinkle than ever across his brow.
“She must pay me a long visit,” said poor Aunt Agatha, “since she has been so long of coming. Now that I have her she shall not go away.”
“And Percival?” said Sir Edward. He had cast about in his own mind for the best means of approaching this difficult subject, but had ended by feeling there was nothing for it but plain speaking. And then, though there were reports that they did not “get on,” still there was nothing as yet to justify suspicions of a final rupture. “I hope you left him quite well; I hope we are to see him, too.”
“He was very well when I left him, thank you,” said Winnie, with steady formality; and then the conversation once more came to a dead stop.
Sir Edward was disconcerted. He had come to examine, to reprove, and to exhort, but he was not prepared to be met with this steady front of unconsciousness. He thought the wanderer had most likely come home full of complaints and outcries, and that it might be in his power to set her right. He hemmed and cleared his throat a little, and cast about what he should say, but he had no better inspiration than to turn to Aunt Agatha and disturb her gentle mind with another topic, and for this moment let the original subject rest.
“Ah—have you heard lately from Earlston?” he said, turning to Miss Seton. “I have just been hearing a report about Francis Ochterlony. I hope it is not true.”
“What kind of report?” said Aunt Agatha, breathlessly. A few minutes before she could not have believed that any consideration whatever would have disturbed her from the one subject which was for the moment dearest to her heart—but Sir Edward with his usual felicity had found out another chord which vibrated almost as painfully. Her old delusion recurred to Aunt Agatha with the swiftness of lightning. He might be going to marry, and divert the inheritance from Hugh, and she did her best to persuade her lips to a kind of smile.
“They say he is ill,” said Sir Edward; “but of course if you have not heard—I thought he did not look like himself when we were there. Very poorly I heard—not anything violent you know, but a sort of breaking up. Perhaps it is not true.”
Aunt Agatha’s heart had been getting hard usage for some time back. It had jumped to her mouth, and sunk into depths as deep as heart can sink to, time after time in these eventful days. Now she only felt it contract as it were, as if somebody had seized it violently, and she gave a little cry, for it hurt her.