The maid noticed a change in the mistress which surprised her, when she
had reached the end of the newspaper story. Of Miss Henley's customary
good spirits not a trace remained. "Few people, Rhoda, remember what
they read as well as you do." She said it kindly and sadly--and she
said no more.
There was a reason for this.
Now at one time, and now at another, Iris had heard of Lord Harry's
faults and failings in fragments of family history. The complete record
of his degraded life, presented in an uninterrupted succession of
events, had now forced itself on her attention for the first time. It
naturally shocked her. She felt, as she had never felt before, how
entirely right her father had been in insisting on her resistance to an
attachment which was unworthy of her. So far, but no farther, her
conscience yielded to its own conviction of what was just. But the one
unassailable vital force in this world is the force of love. It may
submit to the hard necessities of life; it may acknowledge the
imperative claims of duty; it may be silent under reproach, and
submissive to privation--but, suffer what it may, it is the
master-passion still; subject to no artificial influences, owning no
supremacy but the law of its own being. Iris was above the reach of
self-reproach, when her memory recalled the daring action which had
saved Lord Harry at the milestone. Her better sense acknowledged Hugh
Mountjoy's superiority over the other man--but her heart, her perverse
heart, remained true to its first choice in spite of her. She made an
impatient excuse and went out alone to recover her composure in the
farm-house garden.
The hours of the evening passed slowly.
There was a pack of cards in the house; the women tried to amuse
themselves, and failed. Anxiety about Arthur preyed on the spirits of
Miss Henley and Mrs. Lewson. Even the maid, who had only seen him
during his last visit to London, said she wished to-morrow had come and
gone. His sweet temper, his handsome face, his lively talk had made
Arthur a favourite everywhere. Mrs. Lewson had left her comfortable
English home to be his housekeeper, when he tried his rash experiment
of farming in Ireland. And, more wonderful still, even wearisome Sir
Giles became an agreeable person in his nephew's company.
Iris set the example of retiring at an early hour to her room.
There was something terrible in the pastoral silence of the place. It
associated itself mysteriously with her fears for Arthur; it suggested
armed treachery on tiptoe, taking its murderous stand in hiding; the
whistling passage of bullets through the air; the piercing cry of a man
mortally wounded, and that man, perhaps----? Iris shrank from her own
horrid thought. A momentary faintness overcame her; she opened the
window. As she put her head out to breathe the cool night-air, a man on
horseback rode up to the house. Was it Arthur? No: the light-coloured
groom's livery that he wore was just visible.