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But I couldn't help feeling thankful that nobody but me was home when the telegram was brought without any envelope on it, and I had no chance to give it to him until it was too late to take a train that night; for the trouble the poor gentleman was in on account of his sister, being sure, of course, that something had happened to her, put him into such a doleful way that Miss Cicely gave herself up, heart and soul, to comfort him.
Sir Malcolm, too, endeavoured to do the honours with some degree of cheerfulness; but short though the meal was, both were silent before the end and vaguely depressed afterwards. "I can't stand the old fellow's fishy eye!" declared Sir Malcolm. "I'd as soon lunch with a cod-fish, dash it! Didn't you feel it too, Cicely?" "He seemed to look at one so uncomfortably," she agreed.
He had meant that his devotion to Cicely should be a monument to his paternal grief; but the foundations were scarcely laid when he found that the funds of time and patience were almost exhausted. Pride forbade his consigning Cicely to her step-father, though Mrs. Amherst would gladly have undertaken her care; Mrs.
Clinton had arrived at Muriel's house in time for dinner. Walter had come home from Lord's soon enough to meet her at the station and bring her out in his motor-car. He had made Miles sit in front with his servant and he had told his mother what Dick would have told her if she had waited to come to Cicely until after he had returned to Kencote.
So, nothing loth, Cicely handed her the paper, which she took in her strong fingers, broke the seal, snapped the silk, unfolded, and read. It ran thus "To Sir Christopher Harflete, to Mistress Cicely Foterell, to Emlyn Stower, the waiting-woman, and to all others whom it may concern.
Only the dark girl, Cicely Elliott, who had gibed at her a week ago, helped her to pin her sleeve that had been torn by a sword-hilt of some man who had turned suddenly in a crowd. But Katharine had learnt, as well as the magister, that when one is poor one must accept what the gods send.
He had soon made himself known to Babington as the huckster Tibbott of days gone by, and had then disclosed to him that Cicely was certainly not the daughter of her supposed parents, telling of her rescue from the wreck, and hinting that her rank was exalted, and that he knew secrets respecting her which he was about to make known to the Queen of Scots.
"We have no money, good woman," said Cicely, rising to return, vaguely uncomfortable at the woman's eye, which awoke some remembrance of Tibbott the huckster, and the troubles connected with her. "Yea, but if my young mistress would only bring me in to the Great Lady there, I know she would buy of me my beads and bracelets, of give me an alms for my poor children.
Other women do the things they like, and father and the boys do exactly what they like. If you have wanted the same things that I want now, I say you ought to have had them." "If I had had them, Cicely, I should not have found out one very great thing that happiness does not come from these things; it does not come from doing what you like, even if what you like is good in itself.
"You are the only girls in the world father allows us to be the least bit intimate with." "Oh, well," said Molly, "of course Belle and I are very fond of you both, naturally." "Naturally!" echoed Cicely. But then she added, "How queer you look, Molly, as though you were keeping something back!" "Well, yes, I am," said Molly; "but I'll have it out in a minute." "Oh, please, be quick!" said Merry.
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