"Yes, dearest, he will--he will," she said, resolutely. "He will have his fill of shooting bisons, and all manner of big and small game, out yonder; and he will come home, and marry some good sweet girl, who will love you only just a little less than I do, and he will be the last grand example of the old-fashioned country Squire--a race fast dying out; and he will be as much respected as if the power of the Norman Botterells still ruled in the land, and he had the right of dealing out high-handed justice, and immuring his fellow-creatures in a dungeon under his drawing-room."
"I would rather you would not talk about him," answered the widow, gloomily; "you turn everything into a joke. You forget that in my uncertainty about his fate, every thought of him is fraught with pain."
Belle hung her head, and the meal ended in silence. After luncheon came dressing, and then the drive to Twickenham, with Major Bree in attendance. Christabel told him of her success as they drove through the Park to Kensington.
"I have the pleasure to invite you to a seat in my box at the Kaleidoscope this evening," she said.
"A box which Jessie and I secured this morning, before you had finished your breakfast."
"I wonder you care to go to a theatre without Hamleigh."
"It is very cruel of you to say that!" exclaimed Christabel, her eyes brightening with girlish tears, which her pride checked before they could fall. "You ought to know that I am wretched without him--and that I want to lose the sense of my misery in dreamland. The theatre for me is what opium was for Coleridge and De Quincey."
"I understand," said Major Bree; "'you are not merry, but you do beguile the thing you are by seeming otherwise.'"
"Of course, if Mrs. Tregonell does not object."
"I shall be very grateful to you for taking care of them," answered the dowager languidly, as she leant back in her carriage--a fine example of handsome middle-age: gracious, elegant, bearing every mark of good birth, yet with a worn look, as of one for whom fading beauty and decline of strength would come too swiftly. "I know I shall be tired to death when we get back to town."
"I don't think London society suits you so well as the monotony of Mount Royal," said Major Bree.