'By Jove, if old Pudd would only go off the hooks, anyhow! She can't care a straw for him, don't you know, with his old bald pate that he is always jerking forward like a hen when she has laid an egg. She was in love with some fellow who has gone to Egypt--so Holcroft told me--been engaged to him perhaps; but her mother was set upon her marrying old Pudd's coin, and among them all they talked her into it, no doubt. Poor little girl, I must try to console her.'
Lucretia Hurdell, who at times affected girlish airs, now brought that piece of drawing-room foolery, her 'Confession Book,' upon the _tapis_.
'You must positively write me yours, dear Lady Puddicombe,' said she.
'Or permit me to write there for you,' suggested Sir Harry. 'Now to begin--"Were you ever in love?"'
'The idea of asking a married woman that,' exclaimed Miss Hurdell.
'If so, how often?' continued her brother.
'I would say "never," according to the novelist's idea of it,' replied Eveline, with an air of annoyance.
'Don't know what that idea is,' said Sir Henry, eyeing her askance and admiringly.
'I should rather say I have been in love, but never mean to be so again.'
Eveline shivered as she said this, for while conversing apparently with Mr. Pyke Poole the cold eyes of Sir Paget were upon her again.
She felt the rashness of her speech. It was offensive to him, and was not without some point in the mind of Sir Harry.
The cub-hunting was not to begin for a few days yet, and meanwhile the master of the house followed her about pretty persistently, so that she had, ere long, a restless feeling about it. When departing on a riding-party he anticipated Sir Paget by swinging her into the saddle, adjusting her skirts and reins, leaving Pike Poole to do that office for Miss Hurdell, to whom, in return for pleasant quarters, he usually devoted himself, while she, with all her alleged indifference to matrimony, was not indisposed to receive his attentions.
There was something in the occasional gaze of Sir Harry that puzzled the innocent Eveline and made her feel restless under it, especially when he hung over her at the piano, as he constantly did; and now she played more than she cared for, to avoid conversation and have freedom to indulge in her own sad thoughts.