"
"Is he coming up? Or is Kirton to be proxy?"
"He is--coming, I think," said Val, evidently knowing nothing one way or
the other. "He'll be here, I daresay, to-morrow morning."
Opening the other letter as he spoke--a foreign-looking letter this
one--he put it up in the same hasty manner, with barely a glance; and
then went on slowly with his dressing.
"Why don't you read your letters, Percival?"
"I haven't time. Dinner will be waiting."
She knew that he had plenty of time, and that dinner would not be
waiting; she knew quite certainly that there was something in both
letters she must not see. Rising from her seat in silence, she went out
of the room with her baby; resentment and an unhealthy curiosity doing
battle in her heart.
Lord Hartledon slipped the bolt of the door and read the letters at once;
the foreign one first, over which he seemed to take an instant's counsel
with himself. Before going down he locked them up in a small ebony
cabinet which stood against the wall. The room was his own exclusively;
his wife had nothing to do with it.
Had they been alone he might have observed her coolness to him; but, with
guests to entertain, he neither saw nor suspected it. She sat opposite
him at dinner richly dressed, her jewels and smiles alike dazzling: but
the smiles were not turned on him.
"Is that chosen sponsor of yours coming up for the christening; lawyer
Carr?" tartly inquired the dowager from her seat, bringing her face and
her turban, all scarlet together, to bear on Hartledon.
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