“It cannot be for cheapness these people have come here,” said Sir John to Charley. “You heard that story about the substitute? That does not look like poverty. Besides, I don’t believe the man is ill. The girl didn’t look as if it were true. He is keeping out of our way. Depend upon it there is something shady about him. I think I’ve seen the girl before.”
“Very likely; she is very young, but she has been out a little,” said Charley hurriedly, anxious to avoid any following out of the subject. “One meets everybody one time or another. Even I, who have spent my time in anything but balls——”
“Yes; by the way, how is it you seem to know the girl so well?” said Sir John.
“I wish, if it’s all the same to you,” cried Charley, out of patience, “that you’d speak a little more civilly. I don’t see why you should call a young lady whom you know nothing of, ‘the girl,’ in that contemptuous way. Yes; it does matter to me. I don’t know that I ever met any one in my life that I admired so much.”
“Whew!” Sir John gave a prolonged whistle of amazement; “why, she’s not fit to hold the candle to Thérèse,” he said; then added drily, “the more reason why I should find out all about them. I am a great deal older than you are, and I don’t mean you to make a fool of yourself if I can help it, Charley.”
“I think you had better mind your own business,” the other said, in high revolt.
And thus Sir John acquired a double motive. He questioned Cécile at great length, and even took her to task for giving her confidence so easily. “If it should turn out, as is most likely to be the case, a person entirely unworthy of your friendship!” he said.
The château was all in agitation over this subject, the girls indignantly protesting, the mother disposed to take alarm. Decidedly the possession of a serious, rangé, important English lover of thirty-five brings its penalties with it; but perhaps, indeed, a lover of any age, however free and easy in his own relationships, would have been equally anxious to guard the lady endowed with his valuable affections from any connection with inappropriate acquaintances. For the moment, however, his zeal did not increase the comfort of the house.
The day was feverish and long—how long and feverish and full of alarm and apprehension perhaps only Helen knew. She sat at watch at her window all the day, trembling whenever she saw any one approach from the direction of the château. In the afternoon Charley came in and consoled her, but rather with a repetition of that sentiment about two being better than one, than with any more immediately satisfactory information. Helen thought the day would never come to an end; and there seemed no comfort in the fact that sooner or later it must come to an end, for what was there to hope but that to-morrow would be like it? After dinner, when the village was all still, her father looked cautiously into the sitting-room. “I must get a breath of air,” he said, half apologetically, half reproachfully. It was as if this imprisonment to his room was Helen’s fault.
“Papa, I don’t think I can bear it another day. Let us go away, let us go away!” she cried.