The Great House

by Stanley John Weyman

That was their meeting. The servant was there; under his eyes it could not be warmer. Whether one or the other had foreseen this need not be asked.

He spoke to the man, who, possessed by a natural curiosity, was all ears. “Keep them moving,” he said. “Drive back a mile or two and return.” Then to Mary, his hat still in his hand, “A long time away? Longer than I expected, and far longer than I hoped, Mary. Shall we go up the hill a little?”

“I thought you would propose that,” she said. “I am so glad that it is fine.”

The man had turned the horses. Audley took her hand again and pressed it, looking in her face, telling himself that she grew more handsome every day. Why hadn’t she thirty thousand pounds? Aloud he said, “So am I, very glad. Otherwise you could not have met me, and I fancied that you might not wish me to come to the house? Was that so, dear?”

“I think it was,” she said. “He has been gone so very short a time. Perhaps it was foolish of me.”

“Not at all!” he answered, admiring the purity of her complexion. “It was like you.”

“If we had told him, it would have been different.”

“On the other hand,” he said deftly, as he drew her hand through his arm, “it might have troubled his last days? And now, tell me all, Mary, from the beginning. You have gone through dark days and I have not been—I could not be with you. But I want to share them.”

She told the story of John Audley’s disappearance, her cheeks growing pale as she described the alarm, the search, the approach of night and her anguish at the thought that her uncle might be lying in some place which they had overlooked! Then she told him of Basset’s arrival, of the discovery, of the manner in which Peter had arranged everything and saved her in every way. It seemed to her that to omit this, to say nothing of him, would be as unfair to the one as uncandid to the other.

My lord’s comment was cordial, yet it jarred on her. “Well done!” he said. “He was made to be of use, poor chap! If it were any one else I should be jealous of him!” And he laughed, pressing her arm to his side.