Bettina did not answer. The evident reasonableness of the father's position, in the eyes of this good and gentle woman, made it impossible for her to speak without dissent to such an atrocity as Lord Hurdly's attitude seemed to her. So she moved away, and the woman took the hint and said no more.
A little distance off, at the end of the long room, she had caught sight of an object that made her heart beat suddenly. She did no more than glance at it, and then returned to the contemplation of the picture before which she was standing. But she had recognized Horace Spotswood in the tall stripling of perhaps fifteen who stood in riding-clothes at the side of a pawing gray horse.
By the time she had made her way to it, in its regular succession, she had quite recovered her calmness and had made up her mind as to her course.
"And who is this handsome boy?" she said, with perfect self-possession, as they stood before the large canvas.
[Illustration: "'AND WHO IS THIS HANDSOME BOY?'"]
"That is Mr. Horace, my lady," said the woman, a sudden tone of emotion mingling with the deference in her voice as her eyes dwelt on the picture fondly.
And who could wonder at this? Surely a more winsome lad had never been seen. He was even then tall, and in his riding coat and breeches looked strangely slender, in contrast to the broad-shouldered physique which she had lately known so well. But the eyes were just the same--direct, frank, eager eyes, which looked straight at you and seemed to make a demand upon you to be as open and frank in return.
Had Bettina searched the world, she could not, as she knew, have found a more significant contrast than the comparison of the honest eyes with the guarded, cold, inscrutable ones into which it was now her lot to look so often.
"Have you known him a long time?" she asked, pleasantly, as the woman remained silent.
"Oh, since he was a little lad, my lady! We all love Mr. Horace here. He is the handsomest and kindest young gentleman in the world, and he's that good to me that I couldn't be fonder of my own son, not forgetting the difference, my lady."
Bettina detected a tone of regretfulness in the woman's voice, and also, she thought, an effort to conceal it. If there was a feeling akin to this regret in her own heart, she also must conceal it. These allusions to the handsome, enthusiastic young fellow to whom she had promised herself in marriage had stirred her deeply. The idea of any one, servant or equal, speaking in this way of the man who was her husband, at any time in his life, gave her a nervous desire to laugh. It was followed by an equally nervous impulse to cry.