Part 6 (2/2)
”Yes,” Belle answers bitterly, ”such a child as Kate Dundas! I knew from the first how it would end, dear. The woman means to marry him, and she will do it.”
Honor sighs. It is dreadful to think of handsome Launce, with his brilliant prospects, being sacrificed to this woman, ten years older than he is, and the widow of a very ”shady” major of dragoons.
”It is not as if he loved her!” says Belle, almost with a sob. ”He does not love her. It's all a 'bewitchment,' as old Aileen would say; and, when she has got him, he'll be miserable.”
”But we mustn't let her get him, dear; we must stop it, you and I.”
”Then I'm sure I don't see how we are to manage it,” Belle sighs.
Neither does Honor, but she is not going to admit that.
Twilight is setting in when Belle gets up to go home.
”Oh, dear, why have I stayed so long?” she says, with a little nervous sigh. ”It will be almost dark before I get out on the road.”
”And what about me here alone all the day--and I shall be alone for hours yet! The _pater_ has gone down to the Low Acres, and the boys are shooting Colonel Frenche's covers. They can't be home till dark.”
”I don't know how you live, and that's the truth, Honor. We often say so at home. I should go mad, I know I should.”
”Oh, I don't feel like that in the least; but sometimes I am lonely--very!”
And in truth it is a very wistful face that watches pretty Belle hurrying down the avenue. Honor has grown very thin and pale of late, and to-night, in her white gown, she looks thinner and paler than ever.
She is feeling the need of a friend sorely. Often Brian Beresford's words come back--”If ever you should want me, either as friend or lover, send for me, and I will come.”
She wants him now--his friends.h.i.+p, she feels, would be a stay and s.h.i.+eld for her--but she never dreams of taking him at his word, and asking him to come back to Donaghmore.
She is feeling unusually depressed as she looks out at the sky, which is slowly changing from pink and opal to a sullen gray.
A morbid dread has been upon her all the day, and the sighing of the wind in the pine-trees--for a storm is rising over a neighboring mountain--does not tend to make her more cheerful. She stands a little while watching the gra.s.s bending before the breeze and the dead leaves swirling and eddying round on the smooth-cropped lawn.
”The rain will be coming down before Aileen could get half-way home,”
she says to herself, and straightway goes down to the kitchen to forbid her old nurse's departure.
The old woman is sitting before the fire, her head slightly turned, as if she were listening.
At the sound of Honor's step on the tiled floor she springs upright.
”How ye startled me, honey! Shure in that soft white gown ye might pa.s.s for one of the blessed saints themselves. I took ye for a spirit--I did an' troth, Miss Honor, at the first glance.”
She seems unusually tired and excited, but she will not hear of staying for the night at Donaghmore.
”Is it a tough old woman like me to be afeard of a sough of wind or a few drops of rain? No, no, my lamb! I'll go home this night, the saints being willin'!”
It is almost dark in the front hall as the girl pa.s.ses through; only a faint gray light comes in at the open door.
In the drawing-room the windows stand open just as she left them; and, wondering a little at the old butler's carelessness, she proceeds to fasten them herself.
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