Alice, who was beginning to have her doubts of Mr. Byron, in spite
of his familiarity with Lord Worthington, smiled falsely and drew
herself up a little. He turned away from her, hurt by her manner,
and so ill able to conceal his feelings that Miss Carew, who was
watching him, set him down privately as the most inept dissimulator
she had ever met. He looked at Lydia wistfully, as if trying to read
her thoughts, which now seemed to be with the setting sun, or in
some equally beautiful and mysterious region. But he could see that
there was no reflection of Miss Goff's scorn in her face.
"And so you really took me for a ghost," he said.
"Yes. I thought at first that you were a statue."
"A statue!"
"You do not seem flattered by that."
"It is not flattering to be taken for a lump of stone," he replied,
ruefully.
Lydia looked at him thoughtfully. Here was a man whom she had
mistaken for the finest image of manly strength and beauty in the
world; and he was so devoid of artistic culture that he held a
statue to be a distasteful lump of stone.
"I believe I was trespassing then," she said; "but I did so
unintentionally. I had gone astray; for I am comparatively a
stranger here, and cannot find my way about the park yet."
"It didn't matter a bit," said Cashel, impetuously. "Come as often
as you want. Mellish fancies that if any one gets a glimpse of me he
won't get any odds. You see he would like people to think--" Cashel
checked himself, and added, in some confusion, "Mellish is mad;
that's about where it is."
Alice glanced significantly at Lydia. She had already suggested that
madness was the real reason of the seclusion of the tenants at the
Warren. Cashel saw the glance, and intercepted it by turning to her
and saying, with an attempt at conversational ease, "How do you young ladies amuse yourselves in the country? Do you
play billiards ever?"
"No," said Alice, indignantly. The question, she thought, implied
that she was capable of spending her evenings on the first floor of
a public-house. To her surprise, Lydia remarked, "I play--a little. I do not care sufficiently for the game to make
myself proficient. You were equipped for lawn-tennis, I think, when
I saw you yesterday. Miss Goff is a celebrated lawn-tennis player.
She vanquished the Australian champion last year."