her parasol, and is gone for it. How is Lydia? What did she say when she heard the news? I suppose by this time everybody knows it."
Percival's lip curved with scorn and disgust as he refolded the letter, in which Emmeline, Judith and Lydia jostled each other as they might have done in a bad dream. Then he looked up, being suddenly aware of eyes that were fixed upon him.
Miss Bryant stood in the doorway: "You've heard from him, Mr. Thorne?"
Percival did not choose to answer as if he were in Miss Bryant's secrets and knew as a matter of course that "him" meant Lisle. Neither did he choose to say that he did not know who was intended by the energetic pronoun. He looked back at Lydia politely and inquiringly, as if he awaited further information before he could be expected to reply.
"Oh, you know," said Lydia scornfully. "You have heard from Mr. Bertie Lisle?"
"Yes," Percival acquiesced gravely.
"Well?"
"Well—what, Miss Bryant?"
"What does he say?" Lydia demanded; and when Thorne arched his brows, "Oh, you needn't look as if you thought it wasn't my business. I've a right to ask after him, at any rate, for old acquaintance' sake."
"I'm sorry to hear you take so much interest in him," he rejoined.
"Why? You may keep your sorrow for your own affairs: I'll manage mine. I can take very good care of myself, I assure you, and I won't trouble you to be sorry for me," said Lydia shortly. I do not think she had ever spoken to a young man before and been unconscious that it was a young man to whom she spoke. But she was utterly heedless of Percival as she questioned him, and he perceived it, and preferred this angry mood. "Can't you tell me anything about him?" said the girl. "Is he well—happy?"
"He writes in the best of spirits."
Lydia advanced a step or two: "And is it all true what they are saying? He has married this young lady?"
"Yes, he has married her."
"And do you suppose he cares for her?" said Lydia slowly.
Thome's brows went up again: "Really, Miss Bryant—"
"Because if he does, he has told lies enough: that's all."
("And he isn't a miracle of honor if he doesn't," said Percival.)
"But that's quite likely," Lydia went on, unheeding. "I knew all the time that he didn't mean any good. He thought I believed him, but I didn't—not more than half, anyhow. But when he went away I didn't guess it was for this."
"You knew he was going?" Thorne said.
Lydia half smiled, in conscious superiority.
"You don't seem to have served yourself particularly well by keeping his secrets. You are deceived at last, like the rest."
"Well, if I haven't served myself I've served him," said Lydia. "And I don't know but what I am glad of it. He wasn't as stuck-up and proud as some people. One likes to be looked at and spoken to as if one wasn't dirt under people's feet. And, after all, I don't see that there's any harm done." There were red rims to Lydia's eyes, telling of tears which must surely have been too persistent to pass for tears of joy at the tidings of Bertie's elopement. "I suppose a marriage like that is all right?" she asked with a quick glance.
"Of course—no doubt of it," said Percival very shortly. He had pitied her a moment earlier.
"Ah! I supposed so. But things ain't always all right when people run away. And the money's all right too, is it?"
"Some of it, at any rate," said Thorne, taking a book from the table.
"Wouldn't he be sure to take care of that! And there's more to come if the father likes, isn't there? He'll get that too: see if he doesn't."
"It is to be hoped he will—for Mrs. Lisle's sake. Otherwise, I cannot say I care to discuss his prospects."
"Well," said Lydia after a pause, during which she turned a ring slowly on her finger—"well, I'll wish him all the happiness he deserves."
Percival's lip curved a little: "Miss Bryant, are you absolutely pitiless?"
Lydia's expression was rather blank. "What do you mean? No, I ain't," she said. "I've nothing more to do with him. He hasn't done me any harm, and I won't wish him any. At least, only a little." With which small ebullition of feminine tenderness and spite she fled hurriedly down stairs to shed a few more tears, and left Thorne to write his letter to Lisle. It was brief, and none the sweeter for that recent interview.
"I return the money," Percival wrote, "which you say was so useful to you. I know that what you have sent me is not yours, but your wife's, and I cannot conscientiously say that I think Mrs. Herbert Lisle is indebted to me in any way.
"I have not delivered your message to your sister. I have no wish to insult her in her trouble, and I know she would feel such persuasion a cruel insult, as indeed I think it would be."
Judith at the same time was writing:
"From this time our paths must lie apart. I will never touch a penny of your wife's money. Do not dare to offer me a share of it again. It seems to me that all the shame and sorrow is mine, and you have only the prosperity. Not for the whole world would I change burdens with you.
"Miss Crawford is going to give up her school at once. She will not see or speak to me, for she suspects me of having been your accomplice. And I cannot help blaming myself that I trusted you so foolishly. But I could not have believed that you would have been false to her—our one friend, our mother's friend. Is it possible that you do not see that every one under her roof should have been sacred to you? But what is the use of saying anything now?
"I don't know, after this, how to appeal to you, and I don't want any promises; but if you feel any regret for the pain you have caused, and if you really wish to do anything for me, I entreat you to be good to Emmeline. It is the only favor I will ever ask of you. She is young and weak, poor girl! and she has trusted you utterly. In God's name, do not repay her trust as you have repaid Miss Crawford's and mine!"
Bertie's incredulous amazement was visible in every line of his answer to Percival:
"Are you both cracked—you and Judith—or am I dreaming? I have read your letters a score of times, and I think I understand them less than I did. Here are sweet bells jangled out of tune with a vengeance, and Heaven only knows what all the row is about: I don't.
"Do you suppose a man never made a runaway match before? And how could I do otherwise than as I did? Was I to stop and consult all the old women in the parish about it—ask Miss Crawford's blessing, and get my sister to look out my train for me and pack my portmanteau? Can't you see that I was obliged to deceive you a little?
"And what is amiss with the marriage itself? It is true that just now Emmeline has the money and I have none, but do you suppose I am going to remain in obscurity all my life? A few years hence you shall own that it was not at all a bad match for her. Old Nash is nobody, though he is clever enough in his own way. His father was a tailor, and made a good lot of money so. By the way, he is certainly coming round (Mr. Nash, I mean, not my grandfather-in-law the tailor: he is dead), and if he doesn't object, why should anybody else?
"If I have done Miss Crawford any harm, I'm very sorry of course. Can't I help her in some way?"
The
