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As the coach passed his face lifted above the arm on the neck of the horse, keen, dark, strange. A man on the box-seat, attracted at first by the uncommon horses and their trappings, caught Belward's eyes. Not he alone, but Belward started then. Some vague intelligence moved the minds of both, and their attention was fixed till the coach rounded a corner and was gone.
He heard a cry: At that moment some one said behind him: "You have your father's romantic manner." He quietly put down the book, and met the other's eyes with a steady directness. "Your memory is good, sir." "Less than thirty years h'm, not so very long!" "Looking back no. You are my father's brother, Ian Belward?" "Your uncle Ian." There was a kind of quizzical loftiness in Ian Belward's manner.
As the coach passed his face lifted above the arm on the neck of the horse, keen, dark, strange. A man on the box-seat, attracted at first by the uncommon horses and their trappings, caught Belward's eyes. Not he alone, but Belward started then. Some vague intelligence moved the minds of both, and their attention was fixed till the coach rounded a corner and was gone.
He was the son of a gentleman; and, as we discovered afterwards, Robert had been too intimate with the wife his one sin of the kind, I believe. Ian came to know, and prevented the rescue. Meanwhile, Robert was liable to the law for the attempt. There was a bitter scene here, and I fear that my wife and I said hard things to Robert." Gaston's eyes were on Lady Belward's portrait.
Meyerbeer flushed at last. "You're rubbing it in," he said angrily. He did wish to be introduced to a good London club. "The question isn't personal, I guess. It's this: Who's Zoug-Zoug?" Smoke had come trailing out of Belward's nose, his head thrown back, his eyes on the ceiling. It stopped, and came out of his mouth on one long, straight whiff.
Meyerbeer flushed at last. "You're rubbing it in," he said angrily. He did wish to be introduced to a good London club. "The question isn't personal, I guess. It's this: Who's Zoug-Zoug?" Smoke had come trailing out of Belward's nose, his head thrown back, his eyes on the ceiling. It stopped, and came out of his mouth on one long, straight whiff.
"The first Gaston showed us the way. His wife was a strolling player's daughter. Good-bye, sir." Lady Belward's face was in her hands. "Good-bye-grandmother," he said at the door, and then he was gone. At the outer door the old housekeeper stepped forward, her gloomy face most agitated. "Oh, sir, oh, sir, you will come back again? Oh, don't go like your father!"
Then she read Sir William Belward's letter, and afterwards Captain Maudsley's. "It has all come at once," she said: "the girl and these! What will you do? Give 'the woman' up for the honour of the Master of the Hounds?" The tone was bitter, exasperating. Gaston was patient. "What do you think, Andree?" "It has only begun," she said. "Wait, King of Ys. Read that other letter."
"But I am here to look an English gentleman, not a grand seigneur, nor a company's trader on a break. Never mind, the thing will wait till we stand in my ancestral halls," he added, with a dry laugh. They neared the Court. The village church was close by the Court-wall. It drew Belward's attention. One by one lights were springing up in it.
The landlord was at Belward's elbow. "The gentleman on the box-seat be from Ridley Court. That's Maister Ian Belward, sir." Gaston Belward's eyes half closed, and a sombre look came, giving his face a handsome malice. He wound his fingers in his horse's mane, and put a foot in the stirrup. "Who is 'Maister Ian'?" "Maister Ian be Sir William's eldest, sir. On'y one that's left, sir.
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