Lady Caroline, with an involuntary, almost affectionate response, put her hand on his arm. "Don't go," she said, lifting her face to him with an eloquence of suppressed and tremulous emotion all about her, which indeed had little reference to this ill-humour of his, but helped to dignify it, and take away the air of trivial rage and mortification which had been too evident at first. Lady Lindores, too, made a step forward with the same intention. He stood and looked at them with a curious medley of feeling, touched at once by the pleasure of a closer approach to his wife, and by a momentary tragic sense of being entirely outside of this group of people to whom he was so closely related. They were his nearest connections, and yet he did not belong to them, never could belong to them! They were of a different species—another world altogether. Lady Car could take care of them. She could understand them, and know their ways; but not he. They were all too fine for him, out of his range, thinking different thoughts, pretending even (for it must surely have been mere pretence) to despise his house, which everybody knew was the great house of the district, infinitely grander than the castle or any other place in the county. He was deeply wounded by this unlooked-for cutting away of the ground from under his feet: but Lady Car was on his side. She could manage them though he could not. Not one of them was equal to her, and it was to him that she belonged. He laughed again, but the sound of his laugh was not harsh as it had been before. "No, no; Lady Car will take care of you," he said.
"I hope," said Millefleurs in his mellifluous tones, "that it is not this intrusion of ours that is sending Mr Torrance away. I know what a nuisance people are coming to luncheon in the middle of an occupied day. Send us away, Lady Caroline, or rather send me away, who am the stranger. Erskine will take me with him to Dalrulzian, and another day I shall return and see the rest of your splendours."
"Mr Torrance has really business," said Carry; "mamma will show you the other rooms, while I speak to my husband." She went swiftly, softly, after him, as his big figure disappeared in the long vista of the great dining-room. After a moment's pause of embarrassment, the rest went on. Carry hurried trembling after her tyrant. When they were out of hearing she called him anxiously. "Oh, don't go, Pat. How do you think I can entertain such a party when they know that you are offended, and will not stay?"
"You will get on better without me," he said. "I can't stand these fellows and their airs. It isn't any fault of yours, Lady Car. Come, I'm pleased with you. You've stood by your own this time, I will say that for you. But they're your kind, they're not mine. Dash the little beggar, what a cheek he has! I'm not used to hear the house run down. But never mind, I don't care a pin,—and it's not your fault this time, Car," he said, with a laugh, touching her cheek with his finger with a touch which was half a blow and half a caress. This was about as much tenderness as he was capable of showing. Carry followed him to the door, and saw him plunge down the great steps, and turn in the direction of the stables. Perhaps she was not sorry to avoid all further occasion of offence. She returned slowly through the long, vulgar, costly rooms—a sigh of relief came from her overladen heart; but relief in one point made her but more painfully conscious of another. In the distance Millefleurs was examining closely all the ormolu and finery. As she came in sight of the party, walking slowly like the worn creature she was, feeling as if all the chances of life were over for her, and she herself incomparably older, more weary and exhausted than any of them, and her existence a worn-out thing apart from the brighter current of every day, there remained in her but one flicker of personal anxiety, one terror which yet could make everything more bitter. The group was much the same as when she left them,—Lady Lindores with Millefleurs, Edith and John silent behind them, Rintoul in a sort of general spectatorship, keeping watch upon the party. Carry touched John Erskine's arm furtively and gave him an entreating look. He turned round to her alarmed.
"Lady Caroline! can I do anything? What is it?" he said.
She drew him back into a corner of the great room with its marble pillars. She was so breathless that she could hardly speak. "It is nothing—it is only—a question. Are you expecting—people—at Dalrulzian?"
Carry's soft eyes had expanded to twice their size, and looked at him out of two caves of anxiety and hollow paleness. She gave him her hand unawares, as if asking him by that touch more than words could say. John was moved to the heart.
"I think not—I hope not—I have no answer. No, no, there will be no one," he said.
She sank down into a chair with a faint smile. "You will think me foolish—so very foolish—it is nothing to me. But—I am always so frightened," said poor Carry, with the first pretence that occurred to her, "when there is any dispeace."
"There will be no dispeace," said John, "in any case. But I am sure—I can be certain—there will be no one there."