"She will marry," he answered in his deliberate way, humouring her, "but not have many children, and her husband's name should be George."
"Oh, most oracular! a very oracle! a Delphic oracle, only to be interpreted by the event!"
"Just so!" he answered from the door, and then he was gone.
"Evadne, come in!" Mrs. Orton Beg called. "It is getting damp." Evadne roused herself and entered at once by the window.
"I have been hearing voices through my dim dreaming consciousness," she said. "Have you had a visitor?"
"Only the doctor," her aunt replied. "By the way, Evadne," she added, "what is Major Colquhoun's Christian name?"
"George," Evadne answered, surprised. "Why, auntie?"
"Nothing; I wanted to know."
CHAPTER XVI.
When breakfast was over at Fraylingay next morning, and the young people had left the table, Mrs. Frayling helped herself to another cup of coffee, and solemnly opened Evadne's last letter. The coffee was cold, for the poor lady had been waiting, not daring to take the last cup herself, because she knew that the moment she did so her husband would want more. The emptying of the urn was the signal which usually called up his appetite for another cup. He might refuse several times, and even leave the table amiably, so long as there was any left; but the knowledge or suspicion that there was none, set up a sense of injury, unmistakably expressed in his countenance, and not to be satisfied by having more made immediately, although he invariably ordered it just to mark his displeasure. He would get up and ring for it emphatically, and would even sit with it before him for some time after it came, but would finally go out without touching it, and be, as poor Mrs. Frayling mentally expressed it: "Oh, dear! quite upset for the rest of the day."