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Perhaps her last letter to her father, written from Pensham on the night of her arrival there, had given too rose-coloured an account of her visit to Chorlton, and had caused the rather serious headshake which greeted her admission that old Maisie was still a quasi-invalid, on her back from the merest quite the merest weakness.
Anyhow, she deserved a well-earned rest from tension. And presently she would tell the whole strange story to Adrian, and show him that clever forgery.... No! thought stopped with a cruel jerk, and her heart said: "Shall I ever show him anything! Never! Never!" "You went to Pensham, mamma?" said Gwen to her mother, the next day, as soon as an opportunity came for quiet talk.
How could anything be more absurd than to accuse her of conspiring with Irene towards a visit to that young lady at Pensham Steynes? Had she not promised to live without seeing Adrian for six months, and was she not to be trusted to keep her word? She really wished to convince her father of the reality of her attachment, apart from compensation due to loss of sight.
It allowed latitude to a fancy that portrayed Lady Gwendolen Whatever-she-had-become because, of course, she would have to marry some fool as the staunch and constant friend of the family at Pensham. Her devotion to the dummy when in trouble and, indeed, she piled up calamities for the unhappy lady was monumental; an example to her sex.
That time was eight weeks ahead one morning at Pensham Steynes, which has to be borne in mind, as the residence of Sir Hamilton Torrens, Bart., when the blind man, his son, was dictating to his sister Irene one of the long missives he was given to sending to his fiancée in London.
She began to think she would be easy in her mind at Pensham, to-morrow, about old Mrs. Picture, and able to tell the story to her blind lover with a light heart. Old Maisie had come to the postscript. "What is this at the end?" said she. "'The tea is stood ready' for me. And for Granny Marrowbone too."
Whereupon Gwen, who shook hands with him across the table to show her approval, said that anyhow she must hear Adrian's own account of this occurrence from his own mouth forthwith, and she should go back to-morrow to the Towers, and insist upon driving over to Pensham Steynes, whether or no!
No doubt there were several Miss Abercrombies on draught, and he selected the tallest or the cleverest or the most musical, avoiding, of course, the dowdiest. However, there was Lady Ancester's romance, told to account for the languid intercourse between the Castle and Pensham Steynes, and the non-recognition of one another by Gwen and the Man in the Park.
Picture during the remainder of her visit to Pensham, and the blame she apportioned to herself for an imagined neglect afterwards was quite undeserved. Adrian Torrens ought to have been in the seventh heaven during the remainder of an almost uninterrupted afternoon. Not that it was absolutely uninterrupted, because evidences of a chaperon in abeyance were not wanting.
And though he was certainly not a clever man, the Squire of Pensham was the very soul of fair play. His division of the County knew both facts. Now, it seemed to him that it would be fairer play on his part to throw his influence into the scale on the side of the Countess, and protest against the marriage unless some guarantee could be found that there was no heroic taint in the bride's motives.
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