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I only hope she didn't read much of it!" They had just passed the corner of the house, and come out on the sloping lawn of Beechmark, with the lake, and the wood beyond it. All that had happened behind that dark screen of yew, on the distant edge of the water, came rushing back on Philip's imagination, so that he fell silent.
All that seemed probable was that in two or three weeks' time, perhaps, she would be again appealing to the same agency that had sent her to Beechmark. She believed she was entitled to a month's notice. Poor Lord Buntingford! Her sympathies were hotly on his side, so far as she had any understanding of the situation into which she had been plunged with so little warning.
Buntingford made no direct reply, and presently they parted, Alcott engaging to send a messenger over to Beechmark early, with a report of the patient's condition, before Buntingford and Dr. Ramsay started for London. Buntingford walked on. And presently in the dim moonlight ahead he perceived Geoffrey French. The young man approached him timidly, almost expecting to be denounced as an intruder.
Instead, Buntingford put an arm through his, and leaned upon him, at first in a pathetic silence that Geoffrey did not dare to break. Then gradually the story was told again, as much of it as was necessary, as much as Philip could bear. Geoffrey made very little comment, till through the trees they began to see the lights of Beechmark.
He released her, with an unconscious sigh, and she was able to see how much older he seemed to have grown; the touches of grey in his thick black hair, and the added wrinkles round his eyes, those blue eyes that gave him his romantic look, and were his chief beauty. But he resumed at once: "Well, now then, the sooner you come back to Beechmark the better.
Helena's eyes too were wet; and in both there was the memory of that night at Beechmark which had made them sisters rather than friends. "And of course," said Helena "you'll stay with me for ever." But Lucy was far too happy to think of her own future. She had made friends real friends in these three months, after years of loneliness. It seemed to her that was all that mattered.
"Yes but" she laughed "I didn't know how nice Beechmark was." His sore sense winced. "Doesn't Philip want you to go?" "Not at all. He says he gets much more work done in Town, without Mrs. Friend and me to bother him " "He puts it that way?" "Politely! And it rests him to come down here for Sundays. He loves the riding." "I shouldn't have thought the Sundays were much rest?"
"The very day you came to Beechmark, I wrote to Geoffrey, inviting him. And I saw you by chance the day after the dance, together, in the lime-walk." Helena's start almost drew her hands away. He laughed. "I wasn't eavesdropping, dear, and I heard nothing. But my dream seemed to be coming true, and I went away in tip-top spirits just an hour, I think, before Geoffrey found that drawing."
A nurse was coming on the morrow. Then, while Georgina employed her rasping tongue on Mr. Alcott, Cynthia and the Rector's sister conferred in low tones about various urgent matters furniture for the nurse's room, sheets, pillows, and the rest. The Alcotts were very poor, and the Rectory had no reserves. "Of course, we could send for everything to Beechmark," murmured Miss Alcott.
Lady Cynthia and Lady Georgina were his only surviving children, and the earldom was extinct. The sisters possessed a tiny house in Brompton Square, and rented Beechmark Cottage from Lord Buntingford, of whom their mother, long since dead, had been a cousin.
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