“He is Mary’s son——”
“You seem to think more of that,” he said with his angry laugh, “than that he’s mine—and has brought shame on my name.”
“We don’t know that; you cannot prove that. It is being talked of among the servants. Let me send for him. If he comes while you are away, it will be easier. Even if it were true,” cried Evelyn, “you would have to forgive him some time, James.”
“I am not so sure of that,” said her husband, grimly. “Anyhow, he is gone, and there’s an end——”
“There can never be an end. Let me write; let me send——”
“And do you think, you simple woman,” said Rowland, “that a dour fellow like that, a lad that swore at me, and flew in my very face from the first, will come back for the holding up of your little finger?” He took her hand in his, with admiring affection; there was something like a gleam of moisture in his eyes. “It is a bonnie little finger,” he said, “and a kind—and I would follow it over the world: but you must not think to triumph over a young brute like yon, as you do over me.”
“Oh, James, you are mistaken; he is not, he is not——”
“What is he not? I wish he was not a son of mine,” said the father, with darkening brow.
And he said nothing more, neither to forbid nor to permit. Perhaps there was an undercurrent in his heart of hope that she would try what that signal made with her little finger would do. He did not forbid it. His heart gave a heavy thump in his bosom at the proposal. She could do for them both what neither could do for himself—and if she might be right? Women, they say, have intuitions; perhaps she might be right! and the thundercloud might pass over, and he might yet live to believe, in time, that nothing had happened. But he shook his head as he went away. Anyhow, the little absence would be a good thing. It would break the spell of misery; he might be better able to think, to settle something that could be done, when he was away.
When the master of the house goes away, there is often a little sense of relief among the women, however beloved and prized he may be. It leaves them a great deal of freedom—freedom from the control of hours and seasons which, it is a law of the Medes and Persians, can never be infringed when he is at home. He may be no more punctual than the rest, but punctuality is imposed while he is there; and he may be as irregular as he pleases in his way, but the strictest regularity is enforced upon everybody else, out of respect to papa. When he goes away, there is a little slackening all round. Perhaps the mistress lingers in her room in the morning, does not come down to breakfast—and luncheon shades off into puddings and fruit instead of the copious meal of ordinary custom, or else is abolished altogether, the girls staying out, without warning, at some friendly neighbouring house. This was what happened at Rosmore on the morning after James Rowland’s departure. His wife did not come downstairs till it was late, feeling herself more safe to carry on her own thoughts in the seclusion of her own room, and when she appeared at lunch, Marion’s chair was empty, and Rosamond, alone, appeared to share that meal. The conversation languished between the two ladies, each of whom had questions to ask, which could not be put as long as Saunders and his satellite were in the room.