furious. "I hope you have well considered what you are doing?"
"I have. My mind has been made up for some time."
"In that case, Leo, we may as well part good friends. I shall pay your debts and fit you out. Now do not contradict me. If you have any feeling of gratitude you will at least let me do this much."
Haverleigh did not like the proposition, as he felt that Mrs Gabriel was preparing some snare into which he might blindly fall. However, as he could not see his way to a refusal, and, moreover, was weary of this bickering, he merely bowed. Mrs Gabriel had thus gained time, and in some measure had secured the victory. It remained to her to make the best use of it. She was determined that Leo should marry Edith Hale.
"Have you had luncheon, Leo?" she asked, changing the subject.
"No. But I am not hungry now."
"Nonsense. A big man like you. Come in and have something to eat at once."
As a refusal would only have meant another outburst, Leo accepted the inevitable, and moved towards the door with his mother. "By the way," he said, "I met Mr Pratt down below. He intends to ask us to a house-warming."
It might have been Leo's fancy, but he thought that Mrs Gabriel started at the mention of the name. However, there was an emotion in her hard voice as she replied, "I shall be rather glad to see the interior of his house, Leo. It is said that he has the most beautiful things. Will he ask us to dinner?"
"Yes. Hale and his sister are coming."
"Ah!" said Mrs Gabriel in gratified tones.
"And the vicar and his daughter. Also Raston, the curate."
"The church party," said Mrs Gabriel, disdainfully. She had no love for Tempest, whom she regarded as half insane, nor for Sibyl, who was too beautiful for womanly taste, nor for Raston, who had frequently fought her on questions connected with parish affairs.
"By the way," said Leo, who had been meditating, "why has Mr Pratt settled in these parts? I should think he found it dull."
Mrs Gabriel smiled contemptuously. "Mr Pratt is not a foolish young man like someone I know," she said; "he does not find pleasure in the follies of the Town. For my part, I think he is wise to settle here in his old age. He is a delightful neighbour and a pleasant companion."
"He is all that," assented Leo, heartily. He liked Pratt. "You have known him for many years, mother?"
"For ten or twelve," replied Mrs Gabriel, carelessly. "I met him in Vienna, I think, and he called on me when I returned to London. Afterwards he came down here and fell in love with the place. For years he has been a rolling stone, but always said that when he settled down he would come to Colester. He is liked, is he not, Leo?"
"He is more than liked. He is immensely popular – with our friends, if not with the villagers. You have done a good deed in introducing him to our dull parish."
"I don't think Mr Pratt, who has so many resources in himself, finds it dull, my dear. However, I shall be glad to accept the invitation to his dinner. I should like to see him married."
"Indeed! Have you chosen him a wife also?"
Mrs Gabriel laughed. "I thought he might take a fancy to Sibyl Tempest."
"Why, he's old enough to be her father. Besides – "
"Besides you love her," finished Mrs Gabriel, with a shrug. "Well, do not get angry, Leo. I should like to see Mr Pratt marry Sybil and you the husband of Edith Hale. Then everything would be right."
"I don't think so at all," commenced Haverleigh in vexed tones. "But don't let us quarrel any more. I have the greatest regard for Pratt, but I do not care to go the length of letting him marry the girl I love."
"You know very little of Mr Pratt," said Mrs Gabriel, looking suddenly at the young man, "how, then, can you regard him so – "
"Oh, I have seen him often in Town," broke in Leo; "sometimes when I was in difficulties and did not want to tell you Pratt helped me."
"With money?" asked Mrs Gabriel, sharply.
"Of course with money. But I paid him back."
Mrs Gabriel made no answer, but, rising suddenly, passed out of the room, and left Leo eating his luncheon alone. Her usually calm face looked disturbed and her hands were restless. Leo's information had annoyed her.
"What does Pratt mean?" she asked herself. "Can't he leave the boy alone after all these years? I wonder – " She broke off and pressed her hand to her heart as though she there felt a cruel pain. Perhaps she did, but Mrs Gabriel was not the woman to show it.
CHAPTER IV
THE DINNER-PARTY
Built on the lower slopes of the Castle Hill, Mr Pratt's residence, commonly known as The Nun's House, stood a little distance back from the highway which led down to King's-meadows. It was a plain, rough stone building of great strength, two storeys in height, and with a high roof of slate. Gloomy in the extreme, it was rendered still more so from its being encircled by a grove of yew trees which gave it a churchyard air. Not the kind of residence one would have thought attractive to a cheerful and dapper man like Richard Pratt. But he had, so he declared, fallen in love with it at first sight, and Mrs Gabriel, always having an eye to business, had only too readily granted him a seven years' lease. She was delighted at the chance of securing a tenant, as the house had been empty for a long time owing to its uncomfortable reputation. There was not a man, woman or child in Colester that did not know it was haunted.
The name came from a tradition, probably a true one, that when the Colester convent had been suppressed by Henry VIII., the evicted nuns had found refuge in this dismal house, a dozen of them. In time they died, and the mansion was inhabited by other people. But queer sounds were heard, strange sights were seen, and it became known that the twelve nuns re-visited the scene of their exile. There never was a house so populated with ghosts; and the tenants promptly departed. Others, lured by a low rent, came, and after a month's trial departed also. Finally no one would stop in the ill-omened mansion until Mr Pratt arrived. He liked the place, laughed at the gruesome reputation of the dwelling, and announced his intention of making it his home.
"Ghosts!" laughed Pratt, with his cheery smile. "Nonsense. Ghosts went out with gas. Besides, I should rather like to see a ghost, particularly of a nun. I am partial to the fair sex."
"I wonder, then, you never married," said the person who had warned him against the house, with the best intentions, of course.
Pratt looked at her – she was Mrs Bathurst, the gossip of the neighbourhood – under half-closed eye-lids, and smiled. "Ah!" said he, rubbing his plump white hands, "I have admired so many beautiful women, dear lady, that I could not remain constant to one;" which reason, although plausible, did not satisfy Mrs Bathurst. But then she was one of those amiable persons always willing to believe the worst of people.
However, Pratt took up his abode in the chief Colester inn, and sent for cartloads of furniture, while the house was being re-decorated. He took a deal of trouble to make it comfortable, and as he was a man of excellent taste, with an eye for colour, he succeeded in making it pretty as well. In six weeks the place was ready to receive him, and up to the period of his walk with the vicar, Pratt had occupied it for another six without being disturbed by the numerous ghosts. The Colester folks quite expected to hear that he had been carried off like Dr Faust, and were rather disappointed that he met with no ghostly adventure. But then Mr Pratt, as he said himself, was not imaginative enough for spectres.
Failing his leaving the house, the gentry expected that he would entertain them and show his treasures, for it was reported that he had many beautiful things. But Pratt was in no hurry. He wanted first to study his neighbours in order to see who were the most pleasant. In a surprisingly short time he got to know something about everyone, and on the knowledge thus acquired he selected his guests. In addition to those already mentioned, he invited Mrs Bathurst and her daughter Peggy. The girl was pretty and the mother talkative, so, in Pratt's opinion, it paid to ask them. "There is no chance of an entertainment being dull if Mrs Bathurst has her legs under the table," he said, and this being reported to the lady, she accused Pratt of coarseness.