“It is nothing that we ourselves have ever done in our lives that I will swear to you,” said Mrs. M'Leod suddenly. “And we have changed our servants several times. So we know it is not them.”
“Never mind. Let us enjoy ourselves while we can,” said Mr. M'Leod, opening the champagne.
But we did not enjoy ourselves. The talk failed. There were long silences.
“I beg your pardon,” I said, for I thought some one at my elbow was about to speak.
“Ah! That is the other thing!” said Miss M'Leod. Her mother groaned.
We were silent again, and, in a few seconds it must have been, a live grief beyond words—not ghostly dread or horror, but aching, helpless grief—overwhelmed us, each, I felt, according to his or her nature, and held steady like the beam of a burning glass. Behind that pain I was conscious there was a desire on somebody's part to explain something on which some tremendously important issue hung.
Meantime I rolled bread pills and remembered my sins; M'Leod considered his own reflection in a spoon; his wife seemed to be praying, and the girl fidgetted desperately with hands and feet, till the darkness passed on—as though the malignant rays of a burning-glass had been shifted from us.
“There,” said Miss M'Leod, half rising. “Now you see what makes a happy home. Oh, sell it—sell it, father mine, and let us go away!”
“But I've spent thousands on it. You shall go to Harrogate next week, Thea dear.”
“I'm only just back from hotels. I am so tired of packing.”