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Few days passed without the stopping of a Walderhurst carriage before the door of The Kennel Farm. Sometimes Emily came herself to take Mrs. Osborn to drive, sometimes she sent for her to come to lunch and spend the day or night at Palstrey. She felt an interest in the young woman which became an affection.
At the same time there awakened in him a consciousness that Hester would not have been likely to produce such results unless in combination with another element in the situation, the element of another woman who was sympathetic and had some power, the new Lady Walderhurst, in fact.
"It was a girl?" "Yes, absurdly enough." "Oh," sighed Emily, sorrowfully. "I'm sure Hester was afraid to write to me." "Rubbish!" said Lady Maria. "At any rate, as I remarked before, I am going to stay here until Walderhurst comes back. The man will be quite mad with gratified vanity." It was a damp and depressing day on which Lord Walderhurst arrived in London.
It would be like her to have done it. It gave him a shock to see on a small table a thimble and a pair of scissors. "I ought to have been told," he said to Dr. Warren. Dr. Warren sat down and explained why he had not been told. As he spoke, interest was awakened in his mind by the fact that Lord Walderhurst drew towards him the feminine writing-tablet and opened and shut it mechanically.
"Do let me go down a moment or so before you do, so that I can see you come into the room." She was sitting in a chair quite near Lord Walderhurst when her charge entered. She saw him really give something quite like a start when Agatha appeared. His monocle, which had been in his eye, fell out of it, and he picked it up by its thin cord and replaced it.
It is all the nicer" with a sigh "because it isn't really true." "I am sure Lord Walderhurst believed it true," Emily said. "He is not a man who talks, you know. He is very serious and dignified." She had herself a reverence and admiration for Lord Walderhurst bordering on tender awe. He was indeed a well-mannered person, of whom painful things were not said.
In the house of mortal pain or death there is but one thing more full of suggestion than the faint smell of antiseptics, the gruesome, cleanly, unpleasant odour, that is, the unnatural sound of the whispering of hushed voices. Lord Walderhurst turned cold, and felt it necessary to stiffen his spine when he heard his servant's answer and the tone in which it was made.
The house in Berkeley Square was reopened. Lady Walderhurst returned to it, as it was understood below stairs, from a visit to some German health resort. Mrs. Cupp and Jane returned with her. The wife of her physician in attendance was with her a great deal. It was most unfortunate for her ladyship that my lord was detained in India by illness.
He applied for it because he had conceived the idea that his going home as a married man might be a good thing for him. Hester, it seemed not at all improbable, might accomplish something with Walderhurst. If she talked to him in her interesting semi-Oriental way, and was fervid and picturesque in her storytelling, he might be attracted by her.
Lady Agatha and Miss Cora Brooke had pink cheeks. The Marquis of Walderhurst had behaved charmingly to both of them. He had helped each of them to climb about among the ruins, and had taken them both up the steep, dark stairway of one of the towers, and stood with them looking over the turrets into the courtyard and the moat.
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