"No; I have been to Estherleigh," he answered. "The Langtons had a croquet party; and I went to make up the party."
"I wish they had asked me!" cried Bessie.
"So do I," said Sir James. "You are a famous croqueter, and would have come in splendidly. Why do you never play, Clementina?" he asked his betrothed; and, betrothed though she was, the familiarity of the Christian name, unprotected by a title, sounded oddly even to his ears.
"I dislike games so very much," said Clementina. "I think them so silly."
"Oh!" ejaculated Sir James, and "Oh!" cried pretty Bessie, both in a breath together.
"I know that I am a Goth and sadly in the minority," returned Clementina, with her pale, fleeting smile; "but I think a party of full-grown, reasonable beings, playing at games like children, one of the most pitiable sights in the world."
"Oh, come! we must not be too strict!" pleaded Sir James. "Why, old Mr. Langton himself played; so did the vicar; and I am sure there can be no impropriety in anything which the Church sanctions."
"I did not say impropriety, I said silly," was Clementina's gentle rejoinder. "And mind! I do not condemn others; I only dislike the kind of thing for myself."
"Ah! you are a good creature!" said Sir James, evasively: "too good for me, Clementina! you might belong to a saint, a real saint, and not to a miserable sinner like me!"
Clementina smiled again; the same plaintive, evanescent smile as before; but Bessie, looking straight into his face, her great black eyes softened with emotion, said, impulsively: "How can you call yourself a sinner. Sir James, when you are so good and kind to every one!" And then she blushed so violently that the very tears came into her eyes; while Sir James said, heartily, "She was the best little girl in the world, and he wished to goodness he could get a good husband for her—she deserved one!"
After which they all went into the house, where tea was ready.
While sitting round the tea-table—for Mrs. Kinniside, fashionable in all else, kept to that comfortable and primitive custom—Sir James again reverted to the croquet party at Estherleigh to-day; and, after speaking of the various families there—the Crabbes and the Donnes and the Graythwaites and the Joliffes, and who knows who beside?—he added: "And, by-the-bye, who do you think was there, too? Poor Miss Arthur, of Oakingdean! She is staying at the Joliffes', and they brought her. She had not been to a party of any kind, they say, since that terrible affair of her sister's."
Mrs. Kinniside gave a visible start at the name; and put her cup down from her lips, untasted.
"What was the story?" asked Bessie, all abroad.
"Don't you know it?" said Sir James. "Did you never hear of a young lady in shire who was found one morning murdered in her own drawing-room? No one ever knew who did it, for the poor girl was dead when she was found; and though search was made, and the police set to work, the secret was never discovered. The scoundrel, whoever it was, may be alive and prosperous to this day. This was the sister that I met at Estherleigh; and a most miserable-looking creature she is, too! She made my heart ache to see her!"
"What a dreadful story!" said Bessie; she had quite blanched under it; yet to not such deathly paleness as Mrs. Kinniside, who looked as if she would have fainted but for the resoluteness of her will that kept her spirits firm.
