He said this with a vindictive look that startled me, well as I knew that he could not feel very kindly towards Milly’s lover.  The words might mean little, but to me they sounded like a threat.

CHAPTER XI.

DANGER.

The summer that year was a divine one, and we spent the greater part of our lives out of doors, driving, walking, sitting about the garden sometimes until long after dark.  It was weather in which it was a kind of treason against Nature to waste an hour in the house.

We went very often for long rambles in Cumber Wood, winding up with an afternoon tea-drinking in the little study at the Priory—­a home-like unceremonious entertainment which Milly delighted in.  She used to seem to me on those occasions like some happy child playing at being mistress of the house.

Augusta Darrell was almost always with us.  I was sorely puzzled and perplexed by her conduct at this time.  It seemed to be all that a kind stepmother’s could be.  Her old indifferent air had quite vanished; she was more cordial, more affectionately interested in Milly’s happiness than I had supposed it possible she could be.  The girl was completely melted by the change in her manner, and responded to this new warmth with artless confidence in its reality.

I remembered all I had seen and all I had suspected, and I could not bring myself to believe implicitly in Milly’s stepmother.  There was a shadowy fear, a vague distrust in my mind, not to be put away.

As I have said, she was always with us, entering into all our simple amusements with an appearance of girlish pleasure.  Our picnics, our sketching expeditions, our afternoon tea-parties at the Priory, our croquet-matches with the Rector’s daughters, seemed all alike agreeable to her.  I noticed that her toilet was always perfect on theses occasions, and that she neglected no art which could add to her attractiveness; but she never in any way attempted to absorb Mr. Egerton’s attention—­she never ignored his position as Milly’s accepted suitor.

For a long time I was deceived by her manner—­almost convinced that if she had ever cared for Angus Egerton in the past, it was a passion that had died out of her heart.  But there came a day when one look of hers betrayed the real state of the case, and showed me that all this newly-awakened regard for Milly, and pleasant participation in her happiness, had been only a careful piece of acting.  It was nothing but a look—­one earnest, despairing, passionate look—­that told me this, but it was a look that betrayed the secret of a life.  From that moment I never again trusted Augusta Darrell.

With the beginning of autumn the weather changed, and there came a dull rainy season.  Trouble came to us with the change of the weather.  There was a good deal of low fever about Thornleigh, and Milly caught it.  She had never neglected her visit amongst the poor, even in favour of those pleasant engagements with Angus Egerton; and there is no doubt she had taken the fever from some of the cottagers.