Claude had been disgusted by what he considered Arnold’s rudeness to Daphne. “I thought Mrs. Le Moine seemed rather nice, though,” he added.
“Well, I must say,” Nevill said, “she was a little too much for me. English Home Rulers are bad enough, but at least they know nothing about it and are usually merely silly; but Irish ones are more than I can stand. Eddy told me afterwards that her father was that fellow Conolly, who runs the Hibernian—the most disloyal rag that ever throve in a Dublin gutter. It does more harm than any other paper in Ireland, I believe. What can you expect of his daughter, let alone a woman married to a disreputable play-writer, and not even living with him? I rather wonder Mrs. Oliver likes to have her in the house with Daphne.”
“Miss—what d’you call her—Morning—seemed harmless, but a little off it,” said Dick. “She doesn’t talk too much, anyhow, like Denison. Queer things she wears, though. And she doesn’t know much about London, for a person who lives there, I must say. Doesn’t seem to have seen any of the plays. Rather vague, somehow, she struck me as being.”
Claude groaned. “So would her father if you met him. A fearful old dreamer. I coach with him in Political Science. He’s considered a great swell; I was told I was lucky to get him; but I can’t make head or tail of him or his books. His daughter has just his absent eye.”
“Poor things,” said Mrs. Bellairs, sleepily. “And poor Mrs. Oliver and the Dean. I wonder how long these unfortunate people are staying, and if we ought to ask them over one day?”
But none of her children appeared to think they ought. Even Molly, always loyal, always hospitable, always generous, didn’t think so. For stronger in Molly’s child-like soul than even her loyalty and her hospitality, and her generosity, was her moral sense, and this was questioning, shamefacedly, reluctantly, whether these friends of Eddy’s were really “good.”
CHAPTER VIII.
THE VISITORS GO.
NEXT morning Eileen got a letter. She read it before breakfast, turned rather paler, and looked up at Eddy as if she was trying to bring her mind back from a great distance. In her eyes was fear, and that look of brooding, soft pity that he had learnt to associate with one only of Eileen’s friends.
She said, “Hugh’s ill,” frowning at him absently, and added, “I must go to him, this morning. He’s alone,” and Eddy remembered a paragraph he had seen in the Morning Post about Lady Dorothy Datcherd and the Riviera. Lady Dorothy never stayed with Datcherd when he was ill. Periodically his lungs got much worse, and he had to lie up, and he hated that.