“Is it?” she answers, looking up from her cards. “You do not say so!” Then, afraid that the colourless ejaculation is not quite up to the mark, she adds, in a tone where his too-sharp ear detects rather the wish to cheer him than any personal annoyance. “But it will be on again to-morrow. He is quite as keen about it as you—or I.”
Once again that too officious ear tells him of the almost imperceptible hiatus that parts the pronouns.
“Come and help me!” she adds, divining in him some little jarred sensitiveness; and, resting the tranquil friendliness of her eyes upon him, while her hand pulls him down to a seat beside her. “I can’t recollect whether this is red upon black, or if one follows suit.”
That was weeks ago, and Lavinia’s prophecy is fulfilled. On this 23rd of April she has the knowledge that only five weeks of maidenhood remain to her. No sooner had Sir George paid his ill-tempered tribute to his dead son, and frightened and snubbed the survivor into a hurt and passive silence upon the subject nearest to both their hearts, than the increased irritability of his temper and the misery of his look tells his two souffre-douleurs that he has repented of that delay in carrying out his passionately desired project, for which he has to thank himself.
“One more such evening, and I shall think that there is a good deal to be said in praise of parricide!” says Rupert, in groaning relief after the strain of an evening of more than ordinary gibing insult on the one side, and hardly maintained self-restraint on the other. “Of course I know what it means. Poor old chap! He would give the world to climb down; and he would die sooner than do it!”
The young man’s face is pale, and the tears of intolerably wounded feeling glisten in his eyes.
Lavinia listens in parted-lipped compassion, as so often before, for both the sinner and the sinned against.
“I will be his ladder,” she says, in a key of quiet resolve, and so leaves the room.
Half an hour later she returns. Her large eyelids are reddened, and her mouth twitching, but she is determinedly composed.
“It is all right,” she says cheerfully. “We are to be married on May the 28th; and he cried and begged our pardon.”