Which, being the proof of the pudding, settled the question.
CHAPTER XLI
IN THE WOOD PARLOUR
On the 19th of October the sky overhead was clear as sapphire, but all round the circle of the horizon the mists of autumn blurred the landscape. The hills stood no more in their places. Gone were the Kips, with their waving lines. Of the Cruives, with the heather thick and purple upon them, not a trace. Gone the graceful swirl of the Cooran Hill, which curls over like a wave just feathering to break.
To Irma it had been a heavy and a sorrowful day. She had actually wept, and even gone on her knees to her brother to beg him tell her what strange thing had come between them. He would only answer, “You have chosen your path without consulting me. Now I choose mine.”
She charged him with listening to one who had always been an enemy of all who had been good to him ever since he was a little child—of setting himself against those on whose bounty they had lived.
He replied, “If I have lived on their bounty, they know very well that they will not lose by it.”
She mentioned Lalor Maitland’s name, and told him the history of the early attacks on the house of Marnhoul. Louis answered, “He has explained all that. It was done to save me from these people who were already besetting me, in order to rob me.”