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Sir Everard Kingsland rode back to Carteret Park beside the Indian officer and his daughter as a man might ride in a trance. Surely within an hour the whole world had been changed! He rode on air instead of solid soil, and the sunshine of heaven was not half so brilliant as Harriet Hunsden's smile. "Confess now, Sir Everard," she said, "you were shocked and scandalized. I saw it in your face.
To me, once or twice, she had in intimate conversation, uttered venturous thoughts in nervous language; but when the hour of such manifestation was past, I could not recall it; it came of itself and of itself departed. Hunsden's excitations she put by soon with a smile, and recurring to the theme of disputation, said "Since England is nothing, why do the continental nations respect her so?"
I see him now; he stands by Hunsden, who is seated on the lawn under the beech; Hunsden's hand rests on the boy's collar, and he is instilling God knows what principles into his ear. Victor looks well just now, for he listens with a sort of smiling interest; he never looks so like his mother as when he smiles pity the sunshine breaks out so rarely!
Frances, too, regards it with a sort of unexpressed anxiety; while her son leans on Hunsden's knee, or rests against his shoulder, she roves with restless movement round, like a dove guarding its young from a hovering hawk; she says she wishes Hunsden had children of his own, for then he would better know the danger of inciting their pride end indulging their foibles.
Sybilla turned toward him and answered, in a voice plainly audible the length and breadth of the, long room: "She called herself Mrs. Denover. Mr. Parmalee called her his sister. Both were false. She was Captain Harold Hunsden's divorced wife, Lady Kingsland's mother, and a lost, degraded outcast!" There was the silence of death. Men looked blankly in each other's faces, then at the prisoner.
There is some mystery about Captain Hunsden's wife, and pardon me if you like Miss Hunsden, you ought to have it cleared up." Everard laughed a harsh, strident laugh. "If I like Miss Hunsden, my dear little non-committal Milly. Am I to go to Hunsden Hall and say to its master, 'Look here, Captain Hunsden, give me proofs of your marriage tell me all about your mysterious wife.
It is you, William, who are the aristocrat of your family, and you are not as fine a fellow as your plebeian brother by long chalk." There was something in Mr. Hunsden's point-blank mode of speech which rather pleased me than otherwise because it set me at my ease. I continued the conversation with a degree of interest. "How do you happen to know that I am Mr. Crimsworth's brother?
Why did I make myself a tradesman? Why did I enter Hunsden's house this evening? Why, at dawn to-morrow, must I repair to Crimsworth's mill? All that night did I ask myself these questions, and all that night fiercely demanded of my soul an answer. I got no sleep; my head burned, my feet froze; at last the factory bells rang, and I sprang from my bed with other slaves.
Show me that note!" The eyes of Captain Hunsden's daughter inflamed up fierce and bright at sound of that imperious word command. "And I don't choose to be commanded not if you were my king as well as my husband. You shall never see it now!" There was a wood-fire leaping up on the marble hearth. She flung the note impetuously as she spoke into the midst of the flames.
I never linger over a painful and necessary task; I never take pleasure before business, it is not in my nature to do so; impossible to enjoy a leisurely walk over the city, though I perceived the morning was very fine, until I had first presented Mr. Hunsden's letter of introduction, and got fairly on to the track of a new situation.
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