grief. He had placed them a day or two before upon his mother’s grave. He burst into a storm of oaths and tears before the girl, who thought the worse of him for neither. Lady Daintree had died the year before; in fact it was her death that had brought the outcast home, for the reconciliation for which he pleaded in vain.
He had the sympathy of all who knew him; that of Claire was spontaneous and heartfelt and frank; but it never blinded her to Daintree’s faults, which were those of a warped, egotistical, but yet an ardent nature. She cured him of one or two. But he was a man with a weight upon his soul, and she could not cure him of that. She was not told enough. After all, too, her head and her heart were full of another. And thus she was slower to detect the new lover in the new friend than would or could have been the case in normal circumstances.
Indeed it might never have dawned upon her until he spoke, but for the calling in of Lady Starkie to lend her distinguished countenance to the first dinner-party given by Nicholas Harding after his late ordeal. Lady Starkie was a lieutenant-general’s widow, and at all events a shrewd woman of the world.
“My dear,” said she, after luncheon, “that young man never took his eyes off you once, and you never once looked him in the face. You are in love at last!—you both are!”
“Aunt Emily!” cried Claire, aghast but scarlet.
“Hoity-toity!” exclaimed the old lady; “nothing escapes me. My dear, you will do very well; a very interesting face and an admirable family, malgré that atrocious Sir Emilius, who won’t live for ever. No, no, he can’t keep that pace up much longer at his age; and then every mortal thing will be this young man’s and yours!”
