Part 71 (1/2)

”Awkward?”

”Yes. Nasty people go about asking their ages, especially the age of the eldest little horror, and then they can guess to a nicety how long one must have lived. It's a mean way of finding out one's age.

I'm thankful _I_ have no children.”

Mrs. Chichester leans back in her chair and laughs.

Perhaps--_perhaps_--there is a regret in her laugh.

”I think it is the _children_ who ought to be thankful,” says old Miss Gower, covering her with a condemnatory glance.

Mrs. Chichester turns her eye on her.

”Do you know, Miss Gower, you have for once hit a happy truth,” says she.

She smiles blandly on the terrible old maid. But t.i.ta, who has just come down from her room, and has entered the hut, is struck by the queer expression in her eyes.

”You have come at last, t.i.ta,” says Margaret, going to her.

”I have had such a headache,” says t.i.ta, pressing her hands to her brow. ”It has worried me all day. But I came down now, hoping the air and”--sweetly looking round her--”all of you would cure it.”

”I think you ought to be lying down,” says Margaret, seeing the pallor of the young face before her, and pitying the determination, so plainly to be seen, to keep up.

”Maurice”--to Rylton, who has come on the scene a moment later than his wife, so immediately after her, indeed, that one might be forgiven for imagining he had come in her train, only for one thing, he had come from an opposite direction--”Maurice, I think t.i.ta should be induced to lie down for a bit. She looks tired.”

”Nonsense,” says t.i.ta.

Her tone is almost repellent, although it is to Margaret she speaks.

But in reality the tone is meant for Maurice.

”I've got a headache, certainly. But I firmly believe that it has grown out of the knowledge that you are all going to desert me to-morrow.”

This little speech, most innocently meant, she points by smiling at her cousin, Tom Hescott. She had been unkind to him down there in the shrubbery awhile ago, she tells herself, and now she is telling him in silent, sweet little ways that she meant nothing nasty, nothing cold or uncourteous.

Her husband, watching her, sees the glance, and grinds under it. He misunderstands it. As for Tom! Poor Tom! He, too, sees the pretty glance, and he, too, misunderstands it.

All at once a quick but most erroneous thought springs to life within his heart. Her glance now! Her tears awhile ago! Were they for him? Is she sorry because he is leaving her? Is her life here unbearable?

Mrs. Bethune has risen and come up to t.i.ta.

”You speak as if we were going to leave you to immediate destruction?” says she. ”Are you afraid of being left alone with--Maurice?”

Mrs. Chichester, who has a great deal of good in her, mixed up with a terrible amount of frivolity, comes forward so quietly that t.i.ta's sudden whiteness is hardly seen, except by one.

”Fancy being afraid of Sir Maurice,” says she. ”Sir Maurice,”

casting a laughing glance at him, _”I_ shouldn't be afraid of you.”

Sir Maurice laughs back, and everyone laughs with him, and Mrs.

Bethune's barb is blunted.

”I am not afraid of anything,” says t.i.ta lightly. ”But I confess I feel sorry at the thought of losing you all, even for a time----”