“You’ll tell them how false it all is, and how devilish,” said my lady; “devilish, that is the only word.”
“Devilish, if you please,” said Lord Eskside; “but how am I to say it’s false! Half the county know it’s true.”
Lady Eskside stopped the contradiction which came to her lips. She wrung her hands in that impotence which it is so much harder on the strong to bear than on the weak.
“Oh, that woman! that woman!” she cried; “the harm she has done to me and mine!”
“I will lay the whole matter before them,” said Lord Eskside; “there is nothing else for it now—they must hear everything. At times it may be prudent to hold your peace; but when you must speak, you must speak freely. I will tell them everything. It would have been better to have done it long ago.”
“Oh, what is the need of telling them?” cried my lady—“do you think they don’t know? Ay, as well as we do; but do what seems to you good, my good man. It’s like to break my heart; but I am most sorry for you, my dear, my dear!”
“Dry your eyes now, Catherine,” he said, hoarsely; “we must not show our old eyes red to strangers. Come, the bell has rung, and we’ll all be the better of our prayers.”
They went in, arm in arm, to the great dining-room, where the servants were waiting, more curious than can be described, to see how my lord and my lady “were taking it.” They had no satisfaction, I am glad to say. The old lord read his short “chapter,” and the short prayer which followed, in a tone in which the most eager ear could detect no faltering. And my lady, if perhaps not so buoyant in her aspect as yesterday, did not betray herself even to Mary Percival, who knelt calmly by her side, and did not know how her old heart was sinking.
“We will give you a holiday to-day, Val,” Lord Eskside said, after breakfast; “but for me, I will drive over to Castleton and see how everything is going on.”
Val, who had visions of rushing up to the Hewan, and who felt himself perfectly safe in his grandfather’s hands, consented gaily. “If you are sure you don’t want me,” he said; and the old man drove off smiling, waving his hand to the ladies at the door. Harding and the other servants were very much puzzled by their master. They had thought it not unlikely that he might afford them still further excitement by fainting dead away or going off in a fit.