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It looked desolate, and smelt uninhabited; but Quita inspected the horns, the rugs, the sketches, even the handful of books left on the writing-table, with eager interest; and Eldred, stationed on the hearth-rug, answered her running fire of questions a little vaguely, because he was listening more intently to her voice than to what it said!
Eldred took Edmund aside after this determination had been arrived at. "My son," he said, "I allowed you yesterday to stand by my side in battle, and well and worthily did you bear yourself, but to-day you must withdraw. The fight is well-nigh hopeless, and I believe that all who take part in it are doomed to perish.
Then she left him, something hurriedly; and he stood transfixed looking after her, till the falling flap of the tent hid her from view. There could be no thought of sleep for Eldred Lenox that night. Till the moon slipped behind the pines, and the sentinel snow-peak in the North caught, and flung back, the first glimmer of dawn, he paced the empty glade from end to end.
And another thing he stamped with annoyance as he thought of it he had at first hesitated, and then had forgotten, to ask Mrs Simpson for the name of the place where Eldred lived. That, however, he could write about. At least he had his clue in the figures on the paper. If they referred to a press mark in his library, they were only susceptible of a limited number of interpretations.
While they had been thus talking Egbert had been broiling the eels and wild ducks over the fire. He was a freeman, and a distant relation of Edmund's father, Eldred, who was an ealdorman in West Norfolk, his lands lying beyond Thetford, and upon whom, therefore, the first brunt of the Danish invasion from Mercia had fallen.
"I am going now, Eldred," she said, a touch of listlessness in her tone. He looked up and nodded. "That's right. You do look rather fagged this evening." "Only a headache," she answered, flushing and avoiding his eyes. "I shall be all right if I sleep well." "Do you ever sleep badly?" he asked, with the quick sympathy of the sufferer. "Oh dear, no." She hesitated. "Are you coming?" "Yes later."
Just as he passed the stile something fell out of a pocket upon the grass, but with so little sound that Eldred was not conscious of it. In a moment more it was safe for Garrett to cross the stile into the road and pick up a box of matches. Eldred went on, and, as he went, his arms made hasty movements, difficult to interpret in the shadow of the trees that overhung the road.
She was silent most of the time, for the language was her greatest obstacle. She remembered vividly the superior feeling she had had in Berlin, when she had watched Mr. Eldred wrestle with a conditional or had heard Mrs. Eldred struggle to pronounce "ch." It was not nearly so pleasant to be struggling one's self, with a quite senseless "th," for instance.
Officers of all ranks came to call on her as a 'bride'; an embarrassing attention which she would gladly have dispensed with in the circumstances, since Eldred basely deserted her on each occasion; and she was introduced to Norton, who inspected her critically and flagrantly, as a possible stumbling-block to a promising career. Altogether, she was beginning to see India in a new perspective.
Eldred had arranged to be present at this unwonted function, and Hannah chattered to him as she worked. "Be sure you shake hands with her often, Daddy dear," she admonished him. "She is used to so very many hand-shakings a day, you know, and we mustn't cut her down to none at all, the very first thing. It's little matters like that that make you homesick. And homesickness is agony, Father.
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