“And how are your own affairs going on?” said Miss Susan; “we have not had any conversation on the subject since you came back. Well? I am glad to hear it. You have not really been a loser, then, by your fright and your hard work?”
“Rather a gainer on the whole,” said Everard; “besides the amusement. Work is not such a bad thing when you are fond of it. If ever I am in great need, or take a panic again, I shall enjoy it. It takes up your thoughts.”
“Then why don’t you go on, having made a beginning?” said Miss Susan. “You are very well off for a young man, Everard; but suppose you were to marry? And now that you have made a beginning, and got over the worst, I wish you could go on.”
“I don’t think I shall ever marry,” said Everard, with a vague smile creeping about the corners of his lips.
“Very likely! You should have gone on, Everard. A little more money never comes amiss; and as you really like work--”
“When I am forced to it,” he said, laughing. “I am not forced now; that makes all the difference. You don’t expect a young man of the nineteenth century, brought up as I have been, to go to work in cold blood without a motive. No, no, that is too much.”
“If you please, ma’am,” said Martha, coming in, “Stevens wishes to know if the foreign lady and gentleman is staying over Sunday. And Cook wishes to say, please--”
A shadow came over Miss Susan’s face. She forgot the appearances which she had been keeping up with Everard. The color went out of her cheeks; her eyes grew dull and dead, as if the life had died out of them. She put up her hands to stop this further demand upon her.
“They cannot go on Sunday, of course,” she said, “and it is too late to go to-day. Stevens knows that as well as I do, and so do you all. Of course they mean to stay.”
“And if you please, ma’am, Cook says the baby--”
“No more, please, no more!” cried Miss Susan, faintly. “I shall come presently and talk to Cook.”
“You want to get rid of these people,” said Everard, sympathetically, startled by her look. “You don’t like them, Aunt Susan, whatever you may say.”
“I hate them!” she said, low under her breath, with a tone of feeling so intense that he was alarmed by it. Then she recovered herself suddenly, chased the cloud from her face, and fell back into the jaunty manner which had so much surprised and almost shocked him before. “Of course I don’t mean that,” she said, with a laugh. “Even I have caught your fashion of exaggeration; but I don’t love them, indeed, and I think a Sunday with them in the house is a very dismal affair to look forward to. Go and dress, Everard; there is the bell. I must go and speak to Cook.”