"I asked Miss Blessington to tell you, but she forgot."
He turns away with a muttered exclamation, not benedictory towards his betrothed, between his teeth.
"I will try to be as little annoyance to you as I can," says the poor child, in bitter mortification. "You will be out hunting most of the day, I daresay, and, except when I am waiting upon either Mr. and Mrs. Blessington, I am not often downstairs."
He takes no notice of her submissive speech, but stands, with his eyes moodily downcast, upon the white stone of the cold carpetless stairs.
"Believe me, I would go away, if I could," she says, piteously. "I did not wish to be in your way; but I had nowhere to go to."
A shade of pity softens his stern face.
"Are they kind to you?" he asks abruptly.
"Yes—oh yes—quite kind."
"And what, in God's name," he says, slowly, as if the question were forced from him against his will, by the slender fragility of her figure, by the pallid delicacy of her face—"And what, in God's name, can have induced your friends to allow you to accept such a situation, for which you are about as well fitted as I for the archbishopric of Canterbury?"
"I have not many friends, and I did not ask the advice of the few I have."