“Oh, Lady Holchester! is it necessary to ask me? What does he say?”
“He has refused.”
“Refused!”
“Yes,” said Geoffrey. “I don’t go back from my word; I stick to what I said this morning. It’s my endeavor to make you a good husband. It’s my wish to make it up.” He paused, and then added his last reason: “I’m fond of you.”
Their eyes met as he said it to her. Julius felt Anne’s hand suddenly tighten round his. The desperate grasp of the frail cold fingers, the imploring terror in the gentle sensitive face as it slowly turned his way, said to him as if in words, “Don’t leave me friendless to-night!”
“If you both stop here till domesday,” said Geoffrey, “you’ll get nothing more out of me. You have had my reply.”
With that, he seated himself doggedly in a corner of the room; waiting—ostentatiously waiting—for his mother and his brother to take their leave. The position was serious. To argue the matter with him that night was hopeless. To invite Sir Patrick’s interference would only be to provoke his savage temper to a new outbreak. On the other hand, to leave the helpless woman, after what had passed, without another effort to befriend her, was, in her situation, an act of downright inhumanity, and nothing less. Julius took the one way out of the difficulty that was left—the one way worthy of him as a compassionate and an honorable man.
“We will drop it for to-night, Geoffrey,” he said. “But I am not the less resolved, in spite of all that you have said, to return to the subject to-morrow. It would save me some inconvenience—a second journey here from town, and then going back again to my engagements—if I staid with you to-night. Can you give me a bed?”
A look flashed on him from Anne, which thanked him as no words could have thanked him.
“Give you a bed?” repeated Geoffrey. He checked himself, on the point of refusing. His mother was watching him; his wife was watching him—and his wife knew that the room above them was a room to spare. “All right!” he resumed, in another tone, with his eye on his mother. “There’s my empty room up stairs. Have it, if you like. You won’t find I’ve changed my mind to-morrow—but that’s your look-out. Stop here, if the fancy takes you. I’ve no objection. It don’t matter to Me.—Will you trust his lordship under my roof?” he added, addressing his mother. “I might have some motive that I’m hiding from you, you know!” Without waiting for an answer, he turned to Anne. “Go and tell old Dummy to put the sheets on the bed. Say there’s a live lord in the house—she’s to send in something devilish good for supper!” He burst fiercely into a forced laugh. Lady Holchester rose at the moment when Anne was leaving the room. “I shall not be here when you return,” she said. “Let me bid you good-night.”