He did not say anything. When he looked up at all from his bending attitude leaning over the table, it was to glance with fiery devouring eyes at Marian—poor little sweet Marian, already pale with anxiety for him. Then he broke out suddenly—“That poor little sister who is very fond of me—do you know what she is doing at this moment—singing to them!—like the captives at Babylon, making mirth for the spoilers. And my friends—— heaven! you heard what that woman ventured to say to-day.”
“My dear,” said Mrs Atheling, who confessed to treating Louis as a “son of her own,” “think of heaven all the day long, and so much the better for you—but I cannot have you using in this way such a name.”
This simple little reproof did more for Louis than a hundred philosophies. He laughed low, and with emotion took Mrs Atheling’s hand for a moment between his own—said “thank you, mother,” with a momentary smile of delight and good pleasure. Then his face suddenly flushed with a dark and violent colour; he cast an apprehensive yet haughty glance at Mrs Atheling, and drew his hand away. The stain in his blood was a ghost by the side of Louis, and scarcely left him for an instant night nor day.
When he left them, they went to the door with him as they had been wont to do, the mother holding a shawl over her cap, the girls with their fair heads uncovered to the moon. They stood all together at the gate speaking cheerfully, and sending kind messages to Rachel as they bade him good-night—and none of the little group noticed a figure suddenly coming out of the darkness and gliding along past the paling of the garden. “What, boy, you here?” cried a voice suddenly behind Louis, which made him start aside, and they all shrank back a little to recognise in the moonlight the marble-white face of Lord Winterbourne.
“What do you mean, sir, wandering about the country at this hour?” said the stranger—“what conspiracy goes on here, eh?—what are you doing with a parcel of women? Home to your den, you skulking young vagabond—what are you doing here?”
Marian, the least courageous of the three, moved by a sudden impulse, which was not courage but terror, laid her hand quickly upon Louis’s arm. The young man, who had turned his face defiant and furious towards the intruder, turned in an instant, grasping at the little timid hand as a man in danger might grasp at a shield invulnerable, “You perceive, my lord, I am beyond the reach either of your insults or your patronage here,” said the youth, whose blood was dancing in his veins, and who at that moment cared less than the merest stranger, who had never heard his name, for Lord Winterbourne.
“Come, my lad, if you are imposing upon these poor people—I must set you right,” said the man who was called Louis’s father. “Do you know what he is, my good woman, that you harbour this idle young rascal in despite of my known wishes? Home, you young vagabond, home! This boy is——”
“My lord, my lord,” interposed Mrs Atheling, in sudden agitation, “if any disgrace belongs to him, it is yours and not his that you should publish it. Go away, sir, from my door, where you once did harm enough, and don’t try to injure the poor boy—perhaps we know who he is better than you.”
What put this bold and rash speech into the temperate lips of Mamma, no one could ever tell; the effect of it, however, was electric. Lord Winterbourne fell back suddenly, stared at her with his strained eyes in the moonlight, and swore a muttered and inaudible oath. “Home, you hound!” he repeated in a mechanical tone, and then, waving his hand with a threatening and unintelligible gesture, turned to go away. “So long as the door is yours, my friend, I will take care to make no intrusion upon it,” he said significantly before he disappeared; and then the shadow departed out of the moonlight, the stealthy step died on the grass, and they stood alone again with beating hearts. Mamma took Marian’s hand from Louis, but not unkindly, and with an affectionate earnestness bade him go away. He hesitated long, but at length consented, partly for her entreaty, partly for the sake of Rachel. Under other circumstances this provocation would have maddened Louis; but he wrung Agnes’s hand with an excited gaiety as he lingered at the door watching a shadow on the window whither Marian had gone with her mother. “I had best not meet him on the road,” said Louis: “there is the Curate—for once, for your sake, and the sake of what has happened, I will be gracious and take his company; but to tell the truth, I do not care for anything which can befall me to-night.”