“Dear me! I beg your pardon, Reginald, for crying out; how very absurd of me. Mrs. Nugent has gone away! I was so startled I could not help it. She’s gone away! This is to tell me—and she was here all the afternoon yesterday, and never said a word.”
“Oh, that’s the little widow,” said Ralph; “and a very good thing too, I should say, mother. Nothing so dangerous as little widows about.”
Again I am sorry that Lucy was so much absorbed in her own emotions as not to be capable of general observation, or she would have seen that both her brother Reginald and Mr. Bertram looked at Raaf as if they would like to cut his throat.
“She says she did tell me yesterday,” said Mrs. Wradisley, reading her letter. “‘I mentioned that I had news that disturbed me a little.’ Yes, now I recollect she did. I thought she wasn’t looking herself, and of course I asked what was the matter. But I had forgotten all about it, and I never thought it was serious. ‘And now I find that I must go. You have all been so kind to me, and I am so sorry to leave. Tiny, too, will break her little heart; only a child always believes she is coming back again to-morrow; and the worst of it is I don’t know when I may be able to get back.’”
“But, mother, she can’t have gone yet; there will be time to run and say good-by by the ten o’clock train,” said Lucy, getting up hurriedly.
Once more Mrs. Wradisley raised a restraining hand, “Listen,” she said, “you’ve not heard the end. ‘To-night I am going up to town by the eight o’clock train. I have not quite settled what my movements will be afterwards; but you shall hear when I know myself.’ That’s all,” said the mother, “and very unsatisfactory I call it; but you see you will do no manner of good, Lucy, jumping up and disturbing everybody at breakfast on account of the ten o’clock train.”
“Well,” said Lucy, drawing a long breath, “that is something at least—if she will really let us know as soon as she knows herself.”
“Gammon,” said Ralph. “My belief is you will never hear of your pretty widow again. She’s seen somebody that is up to her tricks, or she’s broken down in some little game, or—”
“Raaf!” cried mother and sister together.
But that was not all. Mr. Wradisley put down his newspaper; his countenance appeared from behind it a little white and drawn, with his eyebrows lowering. “I am sorry, indeed,” he said, “to hear a man of my name speak of a lady he knows nothing about as perhaps—a cad might speak, but not a gentleman.”