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There were no commands, no wishes to obey in the matter, no embargo upon the comings and goings between the two new friends. But Mr. Steel invariably appeared upon the scene as well. The good vicar attributed it to the elderly bridegroom's jealous infatuation for his beautiful young bride; but Morna knew better from the first.
Rachel had left the gentlemen with the proud mien and the unbroken spirit which she had maintained at table without trace of effort; they found her sobbing on Morna Woodgate's shoulder, in distress so poignant and so pitiful that even Steel stopped short upon the threshold.
Langholm; but he knew no more than the man in the moon." "And who told Mr. Langholm, of all people?" pursued Morna Woodgate. "It is not often that we get news of the real world from him!" "Birds of a feather," remarked her caller: "it was Mr. Steel himself who wrote to your other eccentric friend, and told him neither more nor less than I have told you.
Of Morna himself, the huge-shouldered, stern-eyed, violent Connachtman; and of his sons young Goll Mor mac Morna in particular, as huge-shouldered as his father, as fierce in the onset, but merry-eyed when the other was grim, and bubbling with a laughter that made men forgive even his butcheries.
She was rather tall, and very straight, with the pale brown skin and the dark brown eye, which, more especially when associated with hair as light as Morna Woodgate's, go to make up one of the most charming and distinctive types of English womanhood.
Rachel stood a moment with wide nostrils and round eyes; the look hardly lasted longer, and she said no more, but she was aware that Morna had made some answer to her question. "What did you say?" inquired Rachel, turning politely to her visitor. "I said they were blue gums from Australia."
But do you mean to tell me that Mrs. Steel has been tried for something?" "Yes; and by Justice Gibson!" "Poor thing," said Hugh Woodgate, after a pause. Morna took his hand. "My dear, she is, or rather she was, Mrs. Minchin!" "What! The woman who was tried for murdering her husband?" "Yes and acquitted." "Good heavens!" exclaimed the vicar, and for a minute that was all.
Morna looked at her husband with sidelong anxiety, wondering whether he would say as much when he had heard all. She was sure enough of him. But as yet they had never differed on a point that mattered, and the one which was coming mattered infinitely to Morna. "Hugh," she began, "do you remember being with Rachel yesterday at Hornby, when she was introduced to Sir Baldwin Gibson?"
Morna, however, would have been still more puzzled, and her spirit not less vexed, had she heard the first words between the newly married couple after she had gone. "What's that you have got?" asked Steel, as they turned back up the drive, after seeing Morna to her woodland path.
"Now, don't say you wouldn't have thought it of me," she added, "and don't say you would!" "I am far too jealous to say anything at all," Rachel answered with a flattering stare. "And do you mean to tell me that you took a degree?" "Of sorts," admitted Morna, whose spoken English was by no means undefiled.
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