Amidst the noise of the talk around him, the lad went further and further. He talked about Wenderholme already almost as if it were his own, and forgot, for the time, his old friend the Colonel and his misfortunes in an exulting sense of his own highly promising position. "He intended to live at Wenderholme a good deal," he said, and then asked Miss Smethurst whether she would like to live at Wenderholme.
But he did not hear her answer. A figure like a ghost, with pale, sad, resolute face, approached silently, moving from the darker end of the long gallery into the blaze of light about the supper-table.
It was Mr. Prigley.
The master of the house saw him, too, and as he approached said aloud, and not very politely,—
"Better late than never, parson; come and sit down next to my mother and get your supper."
But Mr. Prigley still remained standing. However, he approached the table. Still he would not sit down.
Every one looked at him, and no one who had looked once took his eyes off Mr. Prigley again. There was that in his face which fixed attention irresistibly. The roar of the conversation was suddenly hushed, and a silence succeeded in which you might have heard the breaking of a piece of bread.
Mr. Prigley went straight to Mrs. Ogden, not noticing anybody else. He spoke to her, not loudly, but audibly enough for every one to hear him.
"I have come to tell you, Mrs. Ogden, that Mrs. Stanburne, mother of Colonel Stanburne of Wenderholme, is now lying in a dying state at the vicarage."
Mrs. Ogden did not answer at once. When she had collected her ideas, she said, "I thought Mrs. Stanburne had been in her own house and well in health. If I'd known she was dyin', you may be sure, Mr. Prigley, as there should 'ave been no dancin' i' this house, though she's not a relation of ours. We're only plain people, but we know what's fittin' and seemly."