She still retained her patience: “Can you find no motive in yourself, Lawrence? Do you feel no necessity for action, for courageous trial of what life may hold for you?”
His pale face grew bright with an eager light. “If life but held for me one boon! O Honora....”
She made a quick, silencing gesture, and a glance, inconceivably haughty and scornful, shot from her eyes.
“Are you two people quarrelling?” Miss Ferrier inquired, behind them. “If you are, I am in good time. Tea is ready, and I suppose the sooner we are off, the better.”
“I sent the flowers to the church,” she continued, as they went in through the gorgeous hall, “and directed John to tell Mother Chevreuse that we should come down in about an hour. But he brings me word that she is out with some sick woman, and may not come home till quite late. So we are but three.”
Mother Chevreuse was the priest’s mother. It had grown to be a custom to give her that title, partly out of love for both mother and son, partly because Father Chevreuse himself sometimes called her so.
“It will require one person to carry your train, Annette,” Mr. Gerald said, looking at the length of rustling brown silk over which he had twice stumbled. “And that takes two out; for, of course, you can do nothing in that dress. Honora will have the pleasure of decorating the altar, while we look on.”
Only the faintest shade of mortification passed momentarily over the girl’s face, and vanished. She knew well the power her wealth had with this man, and that she could not make it too evident. Miss Ferrier was frivolous and extravagant, but she was not without discernment.
“Did you ever know me to fail when I attempted anything?” she asked, with a little mingling of defiance and triumph in her air. “Honora goes calmly and steadily to work; but when I begin....”