Miss Burleigh saw her brother go down the road, and knew what had
happened, and such a pang came with the certainty that only then did she
realize how great had been her former confidence. She stood a long while
at her window, listening and watching for Miss Fairfax's return to the
house, but Bessie was resting in Miss Hague's parlor, hearing anecdotes
of her father and uncles when they were little boys, and growing by
degrees composed after her disturbing emotion. She wished to keep the
morning's adventure to herself, or, if the story must be told, to leave
the telling of it to Mr. Cecil Burleigh; and when she went back to the
house, the old governess accompanying her, she betrayed no counsel by
her face: that was rosy with the winter cold, and hardly waxed rosier
when Lady Angleby expressed a wish to know what she had done with her
nephew, missing since breakfast. Bessie very simply said that she had
only seen him for a minute, and she believed that he had gone into the
town; she had been paying a long-promised visit to Miss Hague.
Mr. Cecil Burleigh, reappearing midway the afternoon, was summoned to
his aunt's closet and bidden to explain himself. The explanation was far
from easy. Lady Angleby was profoundly irritated, and reproached her
nephew with his blundering folly in visiting Miss Julia Gardiner in Miss
Fairfax's company. She refused to believe but that his fascination must
have proved irresistible if Miss Fairfax had not been led to the
discovery of that faded romance.
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