“Mrs. Spooner wants me to dine there to-morrow; there is to be a little dance; some of the Gowers are coming. Do you think you can spare me, Fay?”
“Oh, go away; you are all alike!” returned Fay, impatiently; “you have only to blame yourself if Mr. Spooner asks your intentions. I do not think Mr. Huntingdon would approve of Dora one bit; she is not so very handsome, she will not hold a candle to you know whom, and she has no money—a vicar with a large family can not afford a dowry to his daughter.” But, as Erle had very rudely marched out of the room, she finished this little bit of worldly wisdom to empty walls.
Erle had been over to the Grange. He had mooted the question one evening when he and Sir Hugh were keeping Fay company; and, to Fay’s great surprise, her husband had made no objection. “I suppose it would be right for you to call and thank them, Erle,” he had said, as though he were prepared for the suggestion; “and perhaps, Fay”—hesitating slightly—“it might be as well for you to write a little note and say something civil after all their attention.” And Fay thanked him for the permission with a radiant face, as though he had done her a personal favor, and the next day wrote the prettiest and most grateful little note, which Erle promised to deliver.
“You will be sure to keep the girls until I get back,” had been his parting request when he came to fetch the dogs.
It was not exactly the sort of afternoon that Erle would have selected for a country walk—a thaw had set in, and the lanes were perfect quagmires of half-melted snow and slash, in which the dogs paddled and splashed their way with a perfect indifference to the state of their glossy coats; any amount of slush being better than enforced inaction.
“I shall have to leave you outside, my fine fellows,” observed Erle, as Nero took a header into a heap of dirty-looking snow, in which he rolled delightedly. “I am afraid I shall hardly be presentable myself out these are the joys of country life, I suppose.”
But he was not at all sorry when he found himself at the Grange, and a pleasant-looking, gray-haired woman had ushered him into a room where Mr. Ferrers and his sister were sitting. It was a far larger room than the one where Fay had had her foot doctored that day, and was evidently Mr. Ferrers’s peculiar sanctum—two of the walls were lined from the floor to the ceiling with well-filled book-shelves, an ordinary writing-table occupied the center of the room; instead of the bay-window, a glass door afforded egress to the garden, and side windows on either side of the fire-place commanded a view of the yew-tree walk; a Scotch deerhound was stretched on the rug in front of the blazing fire, and two pet canaries were fluttering about a stand of ferns.
Miss Ferrers had evidently been writing from her brother’s dictation, for several letters were lying ready for the post. As Erle had crossed the hall he had distinctly heard the sound of her clear, musical voice, as she read aloud: but the book was already laid aside, and she had risen to welcome him.
Erle fancied she looked paler than on the previous occasion, and he wondered what Mr. Ferrers would have said if he had seen those dark lines under her eyes; perhaps she never told him when she was tired—women liked to be martyrs sometimes.
He was received very cordially; and Miss Ferrers seemed rather touched at the contents of her little note.