You have nothing to fear from me."
She held out her hand, but in her humility and shame, Belle went
without taking it, and through the angry sunset light walked slowly
back to Boisingham. And as she walked there was a look upon her face
that Edward Cossey would scarcely have cared to see.
CHAPTER XXVII
MR. QUEST HAS HIS INNINGS
All that afternoon and far into the evening Mr. Quest was employed in
drafting, and with his own hand engrossing on parchment certain deeds,
for the proper execution of which he seemed to find constant reference
necessary to a tin box of papers labelled "Honham Castle Estates."
By eleven that night everything was finished, and having carefully
collected and docketed his papers, he put the tin box away and went
home to bed.
Next morning, about ten o'clock, Edward Cossey was sitting at
breakfast in no happy frame of mind. He had gone up to the Castle to
dinner on the previous evening, but it cannot be said that he had
enjoyed himself. Ida was there, looking very handsome in her evening
dress, but she was cold as a stone and unapproachable as a statue. She
scarcely spoke to him, indeed, except in answer to some direct remark,
reserving all her conversation for her father, who seemed to have
caught the contagion of restraint, and was, for him, unusually silent
and depressed.
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