With downcast head, and eyes bent on her lap, where her fingers twitched nervously as she knitted without cessation, she sat silent, or put meek questions to her guest.

Mr. Bonnithorne answered in smiles and speeches of six words apiece.

Between each spa.r.s.e reply he addressed himself afresh to his lunch with an appet.i.te that was the reverse of spa.r.s.e. All the while a subdued hum of many voices came up from the booth in the fields below.

At length Mrs. Ritson's anxiety overcame the restraint of her manner.

"Mr. Bonnithorne," she said, "do let the will be made to-night. Urge Mr.

Ritson, when he returns, to admit of no further delay. He has many n.o.ble qualities, but procrastination is his fault. It has been ever so."

Mr. Bonnithorne paused with a gla.s.s half raised to his lips, and lifted his eyes instead.

"Pardon me, madame," he said, with the customary smile which failed to disarm his words; "this is for certain reasons a subject I can hardly discuss with--with--- with a woman."

And just then a peac.o.c.k strutted through the court-yard, startling the still air with its empty scream.

Mrs. Ritson colored deeply. Even modesty like hers had been put to a severe strain. But she dropped her eyes again, finished a row of st.i.tches, rested the steel needle on her lip, and answered quietly:

"Surely a woman may talk of what concerns her husband and her children."

The great man had resumed his knife and fork.

"Not necessarily," he said. "It is a strange and curious fact that there is one condition in which the law does not recognize the right of a woman to call her son her own."

During this prolonged speech, Hugh Ritson, fresh from his interview with Greta Lowther, entered the room, and stretched himself on the couch.

Mrs. Ritson, without shifting the determination of her gaze from the nervous fingers in her lap, said:

"What condition?"

Mr. Bonnithorne twisted slightly, and glanced significantly at Hugh as he answered:

"The condition of illegitimacy."

Something supercilious in the tone jarred on Mrs. Ritson's ear. She looked up from her knitting, and said:

"What do you mean?"

Bonnithorne placed his knife and fork with precision over his empty plate, used his napkin with deliberation, coughed slightly, and said: "I mean that the law denies the name of son to offspring that has been b.a.s.t.a.r.dized."

Mrs. Ritson's face grew crimson, and she rose to her feet.

"If so, the law is cruel and wicked," she said in a voice more tremulous with emotion.

Mr. Bonnithorne leaned languidly back in his chair, ejected a long "hem"

from his overburdened chest, inserted his fingers in the armpits of his waistcoat, looked up, and said: "Odd, isn't it?"

Unluckily for the full effect of Mr. Bonnithorne's subtle witticism, Paul Ritson, with Greta at his side, appeared in the door-way at the moment of its delivery. The manner more than the words had awakened his anger, and the significance of both he interpreted by his mother's agitated face. In two strides he stepped up to where the great man sat, even now all smiles and white teeth, and laid a powerful hand on his arm.

"My friend," said Paul, l.u.s.tily, "it might not be safe for you to speak to my mother again like that!"

Mr. Bonnithorne rose stiffly, and his shifty eyes looked into Paul's wrathful face.

"Safe?" he echoed with emphasis.

Paul, his lips compressed, bent his head, and at the same instant brought the other hand down on the table.

Without speaking, Mr. Bonnithorne shuffled back into his seat. Mrs.

Ritson, letting fall her knitting into her lap, sat and dropped her face into her hands. Paul took her by the arm, raised her up, and led her out of the room. As he did so, he pa.s.sed the couch on which Hugh Ritson lay, and looked down with mingled anger and contempt into his brother's indifferent eyes.

When the door closed behind them, Hugh Ritson and Mr. Bonnithorne rose together. There was a momentary gleam of mutual consciousness. Then instantly, suddenly, by one impulse, the two men joined hands across the table.

CHAPTER VII.

The cloud that had hung over Walna Scar broke above the valley, and a heavy rain-storm, with low mutterings of distant thunder, drove the pleasure-people from the meadow to the booth. It was a long canvas tent with a drinking-bar at one end, and stalls in the corners for the sale of gingerbreads and gimcracks. The gra.s.s under it was trodden flat, and in patches the earth was bare and wet beneath the trapesing feet of the people. They were a mixed and curious company. In a ring that was cleared by an athletic plowman the fiddler-postman of Newlands, Tom o'

Dint, was seated on a tub turned bottom up. He was a little man with bowed legs and feet a foot long.

"Now, la.s.ses, step forret! Dunnot be blate. Come along with ye, any as have springiness in them!"

The rough invitation was accepted without too much timidity by several damsels dressed in gorgeous gowns and bonnets. Then up and down, one, two, three, cut and shuffle, cross, under, and up and down again.

"I'll be mounting my best nag and comin' ower to Scara Crag and tappin'

at your window some neet soon," whispered a young fellow to the girl he had just danced with.

She laughed a little mockingly.

"Your best nag, w.i.l.l.y?"

"Weel--the maister's."

She laughed again, and a sneer curled her lip. "You Colebank chaps are famous sweethearts, I hear. Fare-te-weel, w.i.l.l.y."

And she twisted on her heel. He followed her up.

"Dunnet gowl, Aggy. Mappen I'll be maister man mysel' soon."

Aggy pushed her way through the crowd and disappeared.

"She's packed him off wi' a flea in his ear," said an elderly man standing near.

"Just like all the lave of them," said another, "snurling up her neb at a man for lack of gear. Why didna he brag of some rich uncle in Austrilly?"

"Ey, and stuff her with all sorts of flaitchment and lies. Then all the la.s.ses wad be glyming at him."

The dance spun on.