He talked of the estate.
It was the wish of the estate that provision should be made for her.
The estate had decided upon the sum to be paid quarterly.
I watched him like a hawk.
“If you do not wish to seem mixed up in the affair,” he said to me, “you had better not take the letter.
Dobson has to go your way this afternoon.
He can take the letter for me.
It will look better.”
“Excellent,” I said, “and I will go to the bank.
Thank you, uncle.”
“Don’t forget to see Louise before you go,” he said;
“I think she is somewhere in the house.”
I could have done without Louise, in my impatience to be off, but I could not say so.
She was in the parlor, as it happened, and I was obliged to pass the open door from my godfather’s study.
“I thought I heard your voice,” she said.
“Have you come to spend the day?
Let me give you some cake and fruit.
You must be hungry.”
“I have to go at once,” I said, “thank you, Louise.
I only rode over to see my godfather on a business matter.”
“Oh,” she said, “I see.”
Her expression, that had been cheerful and natural at sight of me, turned back to the stiff look of Sunday.
“And how is Mrs. Ashley?” she said.
“My cousin Rachel is well, and exceedingly busy,” I said.
“All the shrubs she brought home from Italy have arrived this morning, and she is planting them out with Tamlyn in the forcing ground.”
“I should have thought you would have stayed at home to help her,” said Louise.
I don’t know what it was about the girl, but this new inflection in her voice was strangely irritating.
I was reminded suddenly of her behavior in old days, when we would be running races in the garden, and just as I would be happily employed she would for no reason shake her curls and say to me,
“I don’t think, after all, I want to play,” and would stand looking at me with this same stubborn face.
“You know perfectly well I am a fool at gardening,” I said, and then, from devilry, I added,
“Haven’t you got over your ill-humor yet?”
She drew herself up, and flushed.
“Ill-humor?
I don’t know what you mean,” she said quickly.
“Oh yes, you do,” I answered.
“You were in a vile humor the whole of Sunday.
It was most noticeable.
I wonder the Pascoe girls did not remark upon it.”
“The Pascoe girls,” she said, “like everyone else, were probably far too busy remarking something else.”
“And what was that?” I asked.
“How simple it must be for a woman of the world, like Mrs. Ashley, to twist a young man like yourself around her finger,” said Louise.
I turned on my heel and left the room.
I could have struck her.
13
By the time I had ridden back along the high road from Pelyn, and across country down into town, and so home again, I must have covered near on twenty miles.
I had paused for a draft of cider at the inn on the town quay, but had eaten nothing, and was well-nigh famished by four o’clock.
The clock struck the hour from the belfry on the house and I rode straight to the stables, where as ill luck had it Wellington was waiting instead of the groom.
He clucked his tongue at sight of Gypsy in a lather.
“This won’t do at all, Mr. Philip, sir,” he said, as I dismounted, and I felt as guilty as I used to do when overheated, and here you’ve been and brought her back steaming.
She’s in no condition to follow hounds, if that’s what you’ve been doing.”