"Will you stay and take tea with me, Isaac?" asked Maria. "I have dined.

I am expecting Rose."

"I am taking tea already," answered Isaac, with a laugh. "I was at Grace's. We were beginning tea, when I put my hand into my pocket to take out my letter, and found it was George G.o.dolphin's."

"You were not in haste to read your own letter," returned Maria.

"No. I knew who it was from. There was no hurry. I ran; all the way from Grace's here, and now I must run back again. Good-bye, Maria."

Isaac went away. George was in and out of the room, walking about in a restless manner. Several arrivals had been heard, and Maria felt sure that all the guests, or nearly all, must have arrived. "Why don't you go to them, George?" she asked.

The hour for dinner struck as she spoke, and George left the room. He did not enter the drawing-room, but went down and spoke to the butler.

"Has Mr. Verrall not come yet?"

"No, sir. Every one else is here."

George retraced his steps and entered the drawing-room. He was gay George again: handsome George; not a line of perplexity could be traced on his open brow, not a shade of care in his bright blue eye. He shook hands with his guests, offering only a half apology, for his tardiness, and saying that he knew his brother was there to replace him.

Some minutes of busy conversation, and then it flagged: another few minutes of it, and a second flag. Thomas G.o.dolphin whispered to his brother. "George, I should not wait. Mr. Verrall cannot be coming."

George went quite red with anger, or some other feeling. "Not be coming?

Of course he is coming? Nothing is likely to detain him."

Thomas said no more. But the waiting---- Well, you all know what it is, this awkward waiting for dinner. By-and-by the butler looked into the room. George thought it might be a hint that dinner was spoiling, and he reluctantly gave orders that it should be served.

A knock at the door--a loud knock--resounding through the house. George G.o.dolphin's face lighted up. "There he is!" he exclaimed. "But it is too bad of him to keep us waiting."

There he is _not_, George might have said, could he have seen through the closed door the applicant standing there. It was only Maria's evening visitor, pretty Rose Hastings.

CHAPTER V.

A REVELATION.

The dinner-table was s.p.a.cious, consequently the absence of one was conspicuous. Mr. Verrall's chair was still left for him: he would come yet, George said. No clergyman was present, and Thomas G.o.dolphin said grace. He sat at the foot of the table, opposite to his brother.

"We are thirteen!" exclaimed Sir John Pevans, a young baronet, who had been reared a milksop, and feared consumption for himself. "I don't much like it. It is the ominous number, you know."

Some of them laughed. "What is that peculiar superst.i.tion?" asked Colonel Max. "I have never been able to understand it."

"The superst.i.tion, is that if thirteen sit down to dinner, one of them is sure to die before the year is out," replied young Pevans, speaking with great seriousness.

"Why is thirteen not as good a number to sit down as any other?" cried Colonel Max, humouring the baronet. "As good as fourteen, for instance?"

"It's the odd number, I suppose."

"_The_ odd number. It's no more the odd number, Pevans, than any other number's odd. What do you say to eleven?--what do you say to fifteen?"

"I can't explain it," returned Sir John. "I only know that the superst.i.tion exists, and that I have noticed, in more instances than one, that it has been borne out. Three or four parties who have sat down thirteen to dinner, have lost one of them before the year has come round. You laugh at me, of course; I have been laughed at before: but suppose you notice it now? We are thirteen of us: see if we are all alive by the end of the year."

Thomas G.o.dolphin, in his inmost heart, thought it not unlikely that one of them, at any rate, would not be there. Several faces were broad with amus.e.m.e.nt: the most serious of them was Lord Averil's.

"_You_ don't believe in it, Averil!" muttered Colonel Max in surprise, as he gazed at him.

"I!" was the answer. "Certainly not. Why should you ask it?"

"You look so grave over it."

"I never like to joke, though it be only by a smile, on the subject of death," replied Lord Averil. "I once received a lesson upon the point, and it will serve me my life."

"Will your lordship tell us what it was!" interposed Sir John, who had been introduced to Lord Averil to-day for the first time.

"I cannot do so now," replied Lord Averil. "The subject is not suited to a merry party," he frankly added. "But it would not help to bear out your superst.i.tion, Sir John: you are possibly thinking that it might do so."

"If I have sat down once thirteen, I have sat down fifty times," cried Colonel Max, "and we all lived the year out and many a year on to it.

You are a sociable fellow to invite out to dinner, Pevans! I fancy Mr.

George G.o.dolphin must be thinking so."

Mr. George G.o.dolphin appeared to be thinking of something that rendered him somewhat distrait. In point of fact, his duties as host were considerably broken by listening to the door. Above the conversation his ear was strained, hoping for the knock that should announce Mr. Verrall.

It was of course strange that he neither appeared nor sent an excuse.

But no knock seemed to come: and George could only rally his powers, and forget Mr. Verrall.

It was a _recherche_ repast. George G.o.dolphin's state dinners always were so. No trouble or expense was spared for them. Luxuries, in season and out of season, would be there. The turtle would seem richer at his table than at any other, the venison more delicate; the Moselle of fuller flavour, the sparkling hermitage of rarest vintage.

The evening pa.s.sed on. Some of the gentlemen were solacing themselves with a cup of coffee, when the butler slipped a note into his master's hand. "The man waits for an answer, sir," he whispered. And George glided out of the room, and opened the note.

"DEAR G.o.dOLPHIN,

"I am ill and lonely, and have halted here midway in my journey for a night's rest before going on again, which I must do at six in the morning. Come in for half an hour--there's a good fellow!

I don't know when we may meet again. The regiment embarks to-morrow; and can't embark without me. Come at once, or I shall be gone to bed.

"G. ST. AUBYN."

One burning, almost irrepressible desire had hung over George all the evening--that he could run up to Verrall's and learn the cause of his absence. Mr. Verrall's absence in itself would not in the least have troubled George; but he had a most urgent reason for wishing to see him: hence his anxiety. To leave his guests to themselves would have been scarcely the thing to do: but this note appeared to afford just the excuse wanted. At any rate, George determined to make it an excuse. The note was dated from the princ.i.p.al inn of the place.

"One of the waiters brought this, I suppose, Pierce?" he said to the butler.

"Yes, sir."

"My compliments, and I will be with Captain St. Aubyn directly."

George went into the room again, and drew his brother aside.

"Thomas, you'll be host for me for half an hour," he whispered. "St.

Aubyn has just sent me an urgent summons to go and see him at the Bell.