Ella smiled and shook her head.
"I must go back next Monday without fail."
"You are as obstinate as the Squire himself," cried her aunt. "I have a great mind to write and tell him that he need not expect you before the twentieth."
"He will expect me back on the thirteenth," said Ella. "And I would not disappoint him for a great deal."
"Well, well, you must have your own way, I suppose. All the same, it is a great deprivation to me. But those good people upstairs will think that I am lost, so come along, both of you."
At this juncture a fresh arrival was announced. It was Mr. Conroy, special artist and correspondent for The Illustrated Globe, whose vivid letters from the seat of war had been so widely read of late. Mrs. Carlyon received him with warmth.
"I hope you have brought some of your sketches with you, as you so kindly promised," she said, when greetings were over.
"My portfolio is in the hall," he replied. "But you must not expect to see anything very finished. In fact, my sketches are all in the rough, just as I jotted them down immediately after the events I have attempted to portray."
"That will only serve to render them the more interesting. They will seem like veritable pulsations of that awful struggle," said Mrs. Carlyon, as she rang the bell and ordered the portfolio to be brought upstairs. Then she introduced Conroy to her niece, Miss Winter: and he gave a perceptible start.
"They have met before," thought Captain Lennox to himself. He was looking on from his seat close by, and he watched narrowly for a gleam of recognition between them. But no such look came into the eyes of either. The Captain, who had a keen nose for anything not above board, turned the matter over in his mind. "That start had a meaning in it," he mused. "There's more under the surface than shows itself at present."