Page:Braddon--Wyllard's weird.djvu/260

252 about Mr. Wyllard's health, and to spend an hour in confidential talk with Dora. To-day she sent a messenger instead, and sat all day in her own room brooding over Heathcote's letter. She felt unequal to facing the twins or the Fräulein, and pleaded a headache as a reason for not going down to luncheon; and indeed her troubled thoughts about that letter from Paris had given her a very real headache.

It was four o'clock in the afternoon, when she heard a carriage drive up to the hall-door, and thought with horror that she would be summoned to receive callers. Her window commanded only an angle of the porch. She could just see a shabby-looking vehicle, which she knew could only be a fly from the station; and her heart began to beat violently as she thought that perhaps her brother had changed his mind, and had come home to do honour to her wedding.

No; it was no such pleasant surprise, only a strange lady who asked to see her. She had sent up her card:

"The lady will be greatly obliged if you will see her," said the servant. "She has come from Plymouth on purpose to see you."

"Of course I will see her," answered Hilda cheerfully. "You have shown her into the drawing-room, I suppose?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Take in tea as soon as you can."

Hilda glanced at her glass before she left the room. Her plain cashmere gown was neat enough, and her hair was tolerably tidy, but her eyes had a heavy look, and she was very pale.

"I'm afraid I don't look a joyful bride, or do Bothwell credit in any way," she said to herself.

She had heard her lover speak once or twice of General Harborough as his kindest and most powerful friend in India. She had heard from Dora of the General's death, and that Bothwell had attended the funeral. And now she felt flattered exceedingly at the idea that the General's widow had taken the trouble to come to see her; no doubt from pure friendliness for her dead husband's protégé—deeming that there was no better compliment she could pay Mr. Grahame than to assume an interest in his betrothed. She, like Dora, took it for granted that old General Harborough's wife would be an elderly woman; and she went down to the drawing-room expecting to see a portly matron, gray-haired, bland, perhaps a little patronising in her double rank of Earl's daughter and General's widow. She was surprised beyond all measure when a tall and slender figure rose to meet her, and she found herself face to face with a young woman whose brilliant eyes and interesting countenance were more striking than commonplace beauty.