Christabel peeped in through the half-opened door.
"Well, Aunt Di, is your conference over? Has her ladyship gone?"
"Yes, dear; I am trying to coax myself to sleep," answered Mrs. Tregonell from the depths of her armchair.
"Then I'll go and dress for dinner. Ah, how I only wish there were a chance of Angus coming back to-night!" sighed Christabel, softly closing the door.
Major Bree came in ten minutes afterwards.
"Come here, and sit by my side," said Mrs. Tregonell. "I want to talk to you seriously."
The Major complied, feeling far from easy in his mind.
"How pale you look!" he said; "is there anything wrong?"
"Yes--everything is wrong! You have treated me very badly. You have been false to me and to Christabel!"
"That is rather a wide accusation," said the Major, calmly. He knew perfectly what was coming, and that he should require all his patience--all that sweetness of temper which had been his distinction through life--in order to leaven the widow's wrath against the absent. "Perhaps, you won't think it too much trouble to explain the exact nature of my offence?"
Mrs. Tregonell told him Lady Cumberbridge's story.
"Did you, or did you not, know this last October?" she asked.
"I had heard something about it when I was in London two years before."
"And you did not consider it your duty to tell me?"
"Certainly not. I told you at the time, when I came back from town, that your young protégé's life had been a trifle wild. Miss Bridgeman remembered the fact, and spoke of it the night Hamleigh came to Mount Royal. When I saw how matters were going with Belle and Hamleigh, I made it my business to question him, considering myself Belle's next friend; and he assured me, as between man and man, that the affair with Stella Mayne was over--that he had broken with her formally and finally. From first to last I believe he acted wonderfully well in the business."
"Acted well!--acted well, to be the avowed lover of such a woman!--to advertise his devotion to her--associate his name with hers irrevocably--for you know that the world never forgets these alliances--and then to come to Mount Royal, and practise upon our provincial ignorance, and offer his battered life to my niece! Was that well?"