"Going already! Why--I declare it is past eleven! Bless me! I hope I have not been rude, Dick? Where are my boots?"
The boots were at hand, ready for him. He put them on, and hid his slippers out of sight in the closet. What with his present grief, and his disinclination for society, or, as he called it, company, that for some time had been growing upon him, Mr. North had held aloof from his guests. But he was one of the last men to show incivility, and it suddenly struck him that perhaps he had been guilty of it.
"Dick, I suppose I ought to have been at the breakfast-table?"
"Not at all, my dear father; not at all. Your remaining in privacy is perfectly natural, and I am sure Sir Nash feels it to be so. Don't disturb yourself: they will come to you here."
Almost as he spoke they entered, Captain-Bohun with them. Sir Nash was a very fine man with a proud face, that put you in mind at once of Arthur Bohun's, and of the calmest, pleasantest, most courteous manners possible. His son was not in the least like him; a studious, sickly man, his health delicate, his dark hair scanty. James Bohun's time was divided between close classical reading and philanthropic pursuits. He strove to have what he called a mission in life: and to make it one that might do him some service in the next world.
"I am so very sorry! I had no idea you would be going so soon: I ought to have been with you before this," began Mr. North in a flutter.
But the baronet laid his hands upon him kindly, and calmed the storm. "My good friend, you have done everything that is right and hospitable. I would have stayed a few hours longer with you, but James has to be in London this afternoon to keep an engagement."
"It is an engagement that I cannot well put off," interposed James Bohun in his small voice that always sounded too weak for a man. "I would not have made it, had I known what was to intervene."
"He has to preside at a public missionary meeting," explained Sir Nash. "It seems to me that he has something or other of the kind on hand every day in the year. I tell him that he is wearing himself out."
"Not every day in the year," spoke the son, taking the words literally. "This is the month for such meetings, you know, Sir Nash."
"You do not look strong," observed Mr. North, studying James Bohun.
"Not in appearance perhaps, but I'm wiry, Mr. North: and we wiry fellows last the longest. What sweet flowers," added Mr. Bohun, stepping to the window. "I could not dress myself this morning for looking at them. I longed to open the window."
"And why did you not?" sensibly asked Mr. North.
"I can't do with the early morning air, sir. I don't accustom myself to it.
"A bit of a valetudinarian," remarked Sir Nash.
"Not at all, father," answered the son. "It is as well to be cautious."
"I sleep with my window open, James, summer and winter. But we all have our different tastes and fancies. And now, my good friend," added the baronet, taking the hands of Mr. North, "when will you come and see me? A change may do you good."
"Thank you; not just yet. Thank you all the same, Sir Nash; but later--perhaps," was Mr. North's answer. He knew that the kindness was meant, the invitation sincere; and of late he had grown to feel grateful for any shown to him. Nevertheless he thought he should never accept this.
"I will not receive you in that hot, bustling London: it is becoming a penance to myself to stay there. You shall come to my place in Kent, and be as quiet as you please. You've never seen Peveril: it cannot boast the charming flowers that you show here, but it is worth seeing. Promise to come."
"If I can. Later. Thank you, Sir Nash; and I beg you and Mr. Bohun to pardon me for all my seeming discourtesy. It has not been meant so."
"No, no."
They walked through the hall to the door, where Mr. North's carriage waited. The large shut-up carriage. Some dim idea was pervading those concerned that to drive to the station in an open dog-cart would be hardly the right thing for these mourners after the recent funeral.
Sir Nash and his son stepped in, followed by Captain Bohun and Richard North, who would accompany them to the station. As Mr. North turned indoors again after watching the carriage away, he ran against his daughter Matilda, resplendent in glittering black silk and jet.
"They have invited you to visit them, have they not, papa?"
"They have invited me--yes. But I shall be none the nearer going there, Matilda."
"Then I wish you would, for I want to go," she returned, speaking imperiously. "Uncle Nash asked me. He asked mamma, and said would I accompany her: and I should like to go. Do you hear, papa? I should like to go."
It was all very well for Miss Matilda North to say "Uncle Nash." Sir Nash was no relation to her whatever: but that he was a baronet, she might have remembered it.
"You and your mamma can go," said Mr. North with animation, as the seductive vision of the house, relieved of madam's presence for an indefinite period, rose mentally before him.
"But mamma says she shall not go."
"Oh, does she?" he cried, his spirits and the vision sinking together. "She'll change her mind perhaps, Matilda. I can't do anything in it, you know."
As if to avoid further colloquy, he passed on to his parlour and shut the door sharply. Matilda North turned into the dining-room, her handsome black silk train following her, her discontented look preceding her. Just then Mrs. North came downstairs, a coquettish, fascinating sort of black lace hood upon her head, one she was in the habit of wearing in the grounds. Matilda North heard the rustle of the robes, and looked out again.
"Are you going to walk, mamma?"
"I am. Have you anything to say against it?"
"It would be all the same if I had," was the pert answer. Not very often did Matilda North gratuitously retort upon her mother; but she was in an ill humour: the guests had gone away much sooner than she had wished or expected, and madam had vexed her.
"That lace hood is not mourning," resumed Miss Matilda North, defiantly viewing madam from top to toe.
Madam turned the hood and the haughty face it encircled on her presuming daughter. The look was enough in itself; and what she might have said was interrupted by the approach of Bessy.
"Have you any particular orders to give this morning, madam?" Bessy asked of her stepmother--whom she as often called madam as mamma, the latter word never meeting with fond response from Mrs. North to her.
"If I have I'll give them later," imperiously replied madam, sweeping out at the hall-door.
"What has angered her now?" thought Bessy. "I hope and trust it is nothing connected with papa. He has enough trouble without having to bear ill-temper."
Bessy North was housekeeper. And a troublesome time she had of it! Between madam's capricious orders, issued at all sorts of inconvenient hours, and the natural resentment of the servants, a less meek and patient spirit would have been worried beyond endurance. Bessy made herself the scape-goat; labouring, both by substantial help and by soothing words, to keep peace in the household. None knew how much Bessy did, or the care that was upon her. Miss Matilda North had never soiled her fingers in her life, never done more than ring the bell, and issue her imperious orders after the fashion of madam, her mother. The two half-sisters were a perfect contrast. Certainly they presented such outwardly, as witness this morning: the one not unlike a peacock, her ornamented head thrown up, her extended train trailing, and her odds and ends of jet gleaming; the other a meek little woman in a black gown of some soft material with some quiet crape upon it, and her smooth hair banded back--for she wore it plain to-day.
On her way to the kitchens, Bessy halted at her father's sitting-room, and opened the door quietly. Mr. North was standing against the window-frame, half inside the room half