"You should have sent us word you were coming," he said; "and your husband should have been with you, Winnie. It was he who took you away, and he ought to have come back to give an account of his stewardship. I shall tell him so when he comes."
Again Winnie made no answer; her face contracted slightly; but soon settled back again into its blank look of self-concentration, and no response came.
"He has no appointment, I suppose; no adjutantship, or anything to keep him from getting away?"
"Perhaps he has gone to see his mother?" said Sir Edward, brightening up. "She is getting quite an old woman, and longs to see him; and you, my pretty Winnie, too. I suppose you will pay her your long-deferred visit, now you have returned to this country? Percival is there?"
"No--I think not," said Winnie, winding herself up in her shawl, as she had done before.
"Then you have left him at----, where he is stationed now," said Sir Edward, becoming more and more point-blank in his attack.
"Look here, Sir Edward," said Winnie; "we are citizens of the world, as you say, and we have not lived such a tranquil life as you have. I did not come here to give an account of my husband; he can take care of himself. I came to have a little quiet and rest, and not to be asked questions. If one could be let alone anywhere, it surely should be in one's own home."
"No, indeed," said Sir Edward, who was embarrassed, and yet more arbitrary than ever; "for in your own home people have a right to know all about you. Though I am not exactly a relative, I have known you all your life; I may say I brought you up, like a child of my own; and to see you come home like this, all alone, without baggage or attendant, as if you had dropped from the skies, and nobody knowing where you come from, or anything about it,--I think, Winnie, my dear, when you consider of it, you will see it is precisely your own friends who ought to know."
Then Aunt Agatha rushed into the _mêlée_, feeling in her own person a little irritated by her old friend's lecture and inquisition.
"Sir Edward is making a mistake, my dear love," she said; "he does not know. Dear Winnie has been telling me everything. It is so nice to know all about her. Those little details that can never go into letters; and when--when Major Percival comes----"