I was vexed indeed, for, notwithstanding a certain flutter at the heart, I had no wish to renew my acquaintance with her.
‘There must be some fatality about the place, Mr Cumbermede!’ she said, almost with her old merry laugh. ‘It frightens me.’
‘Precisely my own feeling, Miss Coningham. I had no idea you were in the neighbourhood.’
‘I cannot say so much as that, for I had heard you were at The Moat; but I had no expectation of seeing you--least of all in this house. I suppose you are on the scent of some musty old book or other,’ she added, approaching the door, where I stood with the handle in my hand.
‘My object is an invasion rather than a hunt,’ I said, drawing back that she might enter.
‘Just as it was the last time you and I were here!’ she went on, with scarcely a pause, and as easily as if there had never been any misunderstanding between us. I had thought myself beyond any further influence from her fascinations, but when I looked in her beautiful face, and heard her allude to the past with so much friendliness, and such apparent unconsciousness of any reason for forgetting it, a tremor ran through me from head to foot. I mastered myself sufficiently to reply, however.
‘It is the last time you will see it so,’ I said; ‘for here stands the Hercules of the stable--about to restore it to cleanliness, and what is of far more consequence in a library--to order.’
‘You don’t mean it!’ she exclaimed with genuine surprise. ‘I’m so glad I’m here!’
‘Indeed I am; though how it came about I don’t know. I dare say my father does. Lady Brotherton has invited me, stiffly of course, to spend a few weeks during their stay. Sir Giles must be in it: I believe I am rather a favourite with the good old man. But I have another fancy: my grandfather is getting old; I suspect my father has been making himself useful, and this invitation is an acknowledgment. Men always buttress their ill-built dignities by keeping poor women in the dark; by which means you drive us to infinite conjecture. That is how we come to be so much cleverer than you at putting two and two together, and making five.’
‘But,’ I ventured to remark, ‘under such circumstances, you will hardly enjoy your visit.’
‘Oh! sha’n’t I? I shall get fun enough out of it for that. They are--all but Sir Giles--they are great fun. Of course they don’t treat me as an equal, but I take it out in amusement. You will find you have to do the same.’