Mrs Clarendon shook her head; then she turned upon her comforter with a sort of indignation. “And you,” she said, “did you never want to know? Did you never wonder how it was that he was there, vegetating in a little foreign place, a man of his gifts? Did you never ask whom you belonged to, what friends you had at home? I am afraid,” she cried suddenly, rising to her feet, throwing off the girl’s hand, which had still held hers, “that you are like your mother in your heart as well as your face—a self-contained, self-satisfying creature. You cannot have been such a child to him as he had a right to, or you would have known all—all there was to know.”
She went to the fire as she spoke and took up the poker and struck the smouldering coals into a blaze with agitated vehemence, shivering nervously, with excitement rather than cold. “Of course that is how it is,” she said. “You must have been thinking of your own little affairs,and not of his. He must have thought he would have his child to confide in and rely upon—and then have found out that she was not of his nature at all, nor thinking of him; and then he would shut his heart close—oh, I know him so well! that is so like Edward—and say nothing, nothing! That was always easier to him than saying a little. It was everything or nothing with him always. And when he found you took no interest, he would shut himself up. But there’s Constance,” she cried after a pause—“Constance is like our side. He will be able to pour out his heart, poor Edward, to her; and she will understand him. There is some comfort in that, at least.”
If Frances had felt a momentary pleasure in giving pain, it was now repaid to her doubly. She sat where her aunt had left her, following with a quiver of consciousness everything she said. Ah, yes; she had been full of her own little affairs. She had thought of the mayonnaises, but not of any spiritual needs to which she could minister. She had not felt any wonder that a man of his gifts should live at Bordighera, or any vehemence of curiosity asto the family she belonged to, or what his antecedents were. She had taken it all quite calmly, accepting as the course of nature the absence of relations and references to home. She had known nothing else, and she had not thought of anything else. Was it her fault all through? Had she been a disappointment to her father, not worthy of him or his confidence? The tears gathered slowly in her eyes. And when Mrs Clarendon suddenly introduced the name of Constance, Frances, too, sprang to her feet with a sense of the intolerable, which she could not master. To be told that she had failed, might be bearable; but that Constance—Constance!—should turn out to possess all that she wanted, to gain the confidence she had not been able to gain, that was more than flesh and blood could bear. She sprang up hastily, and began with trembling hands to button up to her throat the close-fitting outdoor jacket which she had undone. Mrs Clarendon stood, her face lit up with the ruddy blaze of the fire, shooting out sharp arrows of words, with her back turned to her young victim; while Frances behind her, inas great agitation, prepared to bring the conference and controversy to a close.
“If that is what you think,” she said, her voice tremulous with agitation and pain, pulling on her gloves with feverish haste, “perhaps it will be better for me to go away.”
Mrs Clarendon turned round upon her with a start of astonishment. Through the semi-darkness of that London day, which was not much more than twilight through the white curtains, the elder woman looked round upon the girl, quivering with indignation and resentment, to whom she had supposed herself entitled to say what she pleased without fear of calling forth any response of indignation. When she saw the tremor in the little figure standing against the light, the agitated movement of the hands, she was suddenly brought back to herself. It flashed across her at once that the sudden withdrawal of Frances, whom she had welcomed so warmly as her brother’s favourite child, would be a triumph for Lady Markham, already no doubt very triumphant in the unveiling of her husband’s hiding-place and the recovery of the child, and in the fact thatFrances resembled herself, and not the father. To let that enemy understand that she, Waring’s sister, could not secure the affection of Waring’s child, was something which Mrs Clarendon could not face.
“Go—where?” she said. “You forget that you have come to spend the day with me. My lady will not expect you till the evening; and I do not suppose you can wish to expose your father’s sister to her remarks.”
“My mother,” said Frances with an almost sob of emotion, “must be more to me than my father’s sister. Oh, aunt Caroline,” she cried, “you have been very, very hard upon me. I lived as a child lives at home till Constance came, I had never known anything else. Why should I have asked questions? I did not know I had a mother. I thought it was cruel, when I first heard; and now you say it was my fault.”
“It must have been more or less your fault. A girl has no right to be so simple. You ought to have inquired; you ought to have given him no rest; you ought——”
“I will tell you,” said Frances, “what I wasbrought up to do: not to trouble papa; that was all I knew from the time I was a baby. I don’t know who taught me—perhaps Mariuccia, perhaps, only—everything. I was not to trouble him, whatever I did. I was never to cry, nor even to laugh too loud, nor to make a noise, nor to ask questions. Mariuccia and Domenico and every one had only this thought—not to disturb papa. He was always very kind,” she went on, softening, her eyes filling again. “Sometimes he would be displeased about the dinner, or if his papers were disturbed. I dusted them myself, and was very careful; but sometimes that put him out. But he was very kind. He always came to the loggia in the evening, except when he was busy. He used to tell me when my perspective was wrong, and laugh at me, but not to hurt. I think you are mistaken, aunt Caroline, about papa.”
Mrs Clarendon had come a little nearer, and turned her face towards the girl, who stood thus pleading her own cause. Neither of them was quick enough in intelligence to see distinctly the difference of the two pictures which they set before each other—the sister displayingher ideal of a delicate soul wounded and shrinking from the world, finding refuge in the tenderness of his child; the daughter making her simple representation of the father she knew, a man not at all dependent on her tenderness, concerned about the material circumstances of life, about his dinner, and that his papers should not be disturbed—kind, indeed, but in the easy, indifferent way of a father who is scarcely aware that his little girl is blooming into a woman. They were not clever enough to perceive this; and yet they felt the difference with a vague sense that both views, yet neither, were quite true, and that there might be more to say on either side. Frances got choked with tears as she went on, which perhaps was the thing above all others which melted her aunt’s heart. Mrs Clarendon gave the girl credit for a passionate regret and longing for the father she loved; whereas Frances in reality was thinking, not so much of her father, as of the serene childish life which was over for ever, which never could come back again, with all its sacred ignorances, its simple unities, the absence of all complication or perplexity. Already she was so much older, and had acquired so much confusing painful knowledge—that knowledge of good and evil, and sense of another meaning lurking behind the simplest seeming fact and utterance, which, when once it has entered into the mind, is so hard to drive out again.
“Perhaps it was not your fault,” said Mrs Clarendon at last. “Perhaps he had been so used to you as a child, that he did not remember you were grown up. We will say no more about it, Frances. We may be sure he had his reasons. And you say he was busy sometimes. Was he writing? What was he doing? You don’t know what hopes we used to have, and the great things we thought he was going to do. He was so clever; at school and at college, there was nobody like him. We were so proud of him! He might have been Lord Chancellor. Charles even says so, and he is not partial, like me; he might have been anything, if he had but tried. But all the spirit was taken out of him when he married. Oh, many a man has been the same. Women have a great deal to answer for. I am not saying anything aboutyour mother. You are quite right when you say that is not a subject to be discussed with you. Come down-stairs; luncheon is ready; and after that we will go out. We must not quarrel, Frances. We are each other’s nearest relations, when all is said.”
“I don’t want to quarrel, aunt Caroline. Oh no; I never quarrelled with any one. And then you remind me of papa.”
“That is the nicest thing you have said. You can come to me, my dear, whenever you want to talk about him, to ease your heart. You can’t do that with your mother; but you will never tire me. You may tell me about him from morning to night, and I shall never be tired. Mariuccia and Domenico are the servants, I suppose? and they adore him? He was always adored by the servants. He never gave any trouble, never spoke crossly. Oh, how thankful I am to be able to speak of him quite freely! I was his favourite sister. He was just the same in outward manner to us both,—he would not let Minnie see he had any preference; but he liked me the best, all the same.”
It was very grateful to Frances that this monologue should go on: it spared her the necessity of answering many questions which would have been very difficult to her; for she was not prepared to say that the servants, though faithful, adored her father, or that he never gave any trouble. Her recollection of him was that he gave a great deal of trouble, and was “very particular.” But Mrs Clarendon had a happy way of giving herself the information she wanted, and evidently preferred to tell Frances a thousand things, instead of being told by her. And in other ways she was very kind, insisting that Frances should eat at lunch, that she should be wrapped up well when they went out in the victoria, that she should say whether there was any shopping she wanted to do. “I know my lady will look after your finery,” she said,—“that will be for her own credit, and help to get you off the sooner; but I hope you have plenty of nice underclothing and wraps. She is not so sure to think of these.”
Frances, to save herself from this questioning, described the numberless unnecessaries which had been already bestowed upon her, not forgetting the turquoises and other ornaments, which, she remembered with a quick sensation of shame, her mother had told her not to speak of, lest her aunt’s liberalities should be checked. The result, however, was quite different. Mrs Clarendon grew red as she heard of all these acquisitions, and when they returned to Portland Place, led Frances to her own room, and opened to her admiring gaze the safe, securely fixed into the wall, where her jewels were kept. “There are not many that can be called family jewels,” she said; “but I’ve no daughter of my own, and I should not like it to be said that you had got nothing from your father’s side.”
Thus it was a conflict of liberality, not a withholding of presents because she was already supplied, which Frances had to fear. She was compelled to accept with burning cheeks, and eyes weighed down with shame and reluctance, ornaments which a few weeks ago would have seemed to her good enough for a queen. Oh, what a flutter of pleasure there had been in her heart when her father gave her the little necklace of Genoese filigree, which appeared to her the most beautiful thing in the world. Sheslipped into her pocket the cluster of emeralds her aunt gave her, as if she had been a thief, and hid the pretty ring which was forced upon her finger, under her glove. “Oh, they are much too fine for me. They are too good for any girl to wear. I do not want them, indeed, aunt Caroline!”
“That may be,” Mrs Clarendon replied; “but I want to give them to you. It shall never be said that all the good things came from her, and nothing but trumpery from me.”
Frances took home her spoils with a sense of humiliation which weighed her to the ground. Before this, however, she had made the acquaintance of Mr Charles Clarendon, the great Q.C., who came into the cold drawing-room two minutes before dinner in irreproachable evening costume—a well-mannered, well-looking man of middle age, or a little more, who shook hands cordially with Frances, and told her he was very glad to see her. “But dinner is a little late, isn’t it?” he said to his wife. The drawing-room looked less cold by lamplight; and Mrs Clarendon herself, in her soft velvet evening-gown with a good deal of lace—or perhaps itwas after the awakening and excitement of her quarrel with Frances—had less the air of being like the furniture, out of use. The dinner was very luxurious and dainty. Frances, as she sat between husband and wife, observing both very closely without being aware of it, decided within herself that in this particular her aunt Caroline again reminded her of papa. Mr Clarendon was very agreeable at dinner. He gave his wife several pieces of information indeed which Frances did not understand, but in general talked about the things that were going on, the great events of the time, the news, so much of it as was interesting, with all the ease of a man of the world. And he asked Frances a few civil and indeed kindly questions about herself. “You must take care of our east winds,” he said; “you will find them very sharp after the Riviera.”
“I am not delicate,” she said; “I don’t think they will hurt me.”
“No, you are not delicate,” he replied, with what Frances felt to be a look of approval; “one has only to look at you to see that. But fine elastic health like yours is a great possession,and you must take care of it.” He added with a smile, a moment after: “We never think that when we are young; and when we are old, thinking does little good.”
“You have not much to complain of, Charles, in that respect,” said his wife, who was always rather solemn.
“Oh, nothing at all,” was his reply. And shortly after, dinner by this time being over, he gave her a significant look, to which she responded by rising from the table.
“It is time for us to go up-stairs, my dear,” she said to Frances.
And when the ladies reached the drawing-room, it had relapsed into its morning aspect, and looked as chilly and as unused as before.
“Your uncle is one of the busiest men in London,” said Mrs Clarendon with a scarcely perceptible sigh. “He talked of your health; but if he had not the finest health in the world, he could not do it; he never takes any rest.”
“Is he going to work now?” Frances asked with a certain awe.
“He will take a doze for half an hour; then he will have his coffee. At ten he will comeup-stairs to bid me good-night; and then—I dare not say how long he will sit up after that. He can do with less sleep than any other man, I think.” She spoke in a tone that was full of pride, yet with pathos in it too.
“In that way, you cannot see very much of him,” Frances said.
“I am more pleased that my husband should be the first lawyer in England, than that he should sit in the drawing-room with me,” she answered proudly. Then, with a faint sigh: “One has to pay for it,” she added.
The girl looked round upon the dim room with a shiver, which she did her best to conceal. Was it worth the price, she wondered? the cold dim house, the silence in it which weighed down the soul, the half-hour’s talk (no more) round the table, followed by a long lonely evening. She wondered if they had been in love with each other when they were young, and perhaps moved heaven and earth for a chance hour together, and all to come to this. And there was her own father and mother, who probably had loved each other too. As she drove along to Eaton Square, warmlywrapped in the rich fur cloak which aunt Caroline had insisted on adding to her other gifts, these examples of married life gave her a curious thrill of thought, as involuntarily she turned them over in her mind. If the case of a man were so with his wife, it would be well not to marry, she said to herself, as the inquirers did so many years ago.
And then she blushed crimson, with a sensation of heat which made her throw her cloak aside, to think that she was going back to her mother, as if she had been sent out upon a raid, laden with spoils.
Therewere voices in the drawing-room as Frances ran up-stairs, which warned her that her own appearance in her morning dress would be undesirable there. She went on with a sense of relief to her own room, where she threw aside the heavy cloak, lined with fur, which her aunt had insisted on wrapping her in. It was too grave, too ample for Frances, just as the other presents she had received were too rich and valuable for her wearing. She took the emerald brooch out of her pocket in its little case, and thrust it away into her drawer, glad to be rid of it, wondering whether it would be her duty to show it, to exhibit her presents. She divined that Lady Markham would be pleased, that she would congratulate her upon having made herself agreeable to her aunt, andperhaps repeat that horrible encouragement to her to make what progress she could in the affections of the Clarendons, because they were rich and had no heirs. If, instead of saying this, Lady Markham had but said that Mrs Clarendon was lonely, having no children, and little good of her husband’s society, how different it might have been. How anxious then would Frances have been to visit and cheer her father’s sister! The girl, though she was very simple, had a great deal of inalienable good sense; and she could not but wonder within herself how her mother could make so strange a mistake.
It was late before Lady Markham came up-stairs. She came in shading her candle with her hand, gliding noiselessly to her child’s bedside. “Are you not asleep, Frances? I thought you would be too tired to keep awake.”
“Oh no. I have done nothing to tire me. I thought you would not want me down-stairs, as I was not dressed.”
“I always want you,” said Lady Markham, stooping to kiss her. “But I quite understandwhy you did not come. There was nobody that could have interested you. Some old friends of mine, and a man or two whom Markham brought to dine; but nothing young or pleasant. And did you have a tolerable day? Was poor Caroline a little less grey and cold? But Constance used to tell me she was only cold when I was there.”
“I don’t think she was cold. She was—very kind; at least that is what she meant, I am sure,” said Frances, anxious to do her aunt justice.
Lady Markham laughed softly, with a sort of suppressed satisfaction. She was anxious that Frances should please. She had herself, at a considerable sacrifice of pride, kept up friendly relations, or at least a show of friendly relations, with her husband’s sister. But notwithstanding all this, the tone in which Frances spoke was balm to her. The cloak was an evidence that the girl had succeeded; and yet she had not joined herself to the other side. This unexpected triumph gave a softness to Lady Markham’s voice.
“We must remember,” she said, “that poorCaroline is very much alone. When one is much alone, one’s very voice gets rusty, so to speak. It sounds hoarse in one’s throat. You may think, perhaps, that I have not much experience of that. Still, I can understand; and it takes some time to get it toned into ordinary smoothness. It is either too expressive, or else it sounds cold. A great deal of allowance is to be made for a woman who spends so much of her life alone.”
“Oh yes,” cried Frances, with a burst of tender compunction, taking her mother’s soft white dimpled hand in her own, and kissing it with a fervour which meant penitence as well as enthusiasm. “It is so good of you to remind me of that.”
“Because she has not much good to say of me? My dear, there are a great many things that you don’t know, that it would be hard to explain to you: we must forgive her for that.”
And for a moment Lady Markham looked very grave, turning her face away towards the vacancy of the dark room with something that sounded like a sigh. Her daughter had never loved her so much as at this moment. Shelaid her cheek upon her mother’s hand, and felt the full sweetness of that contact enter into her heart.
“But I am disturbing your beauty-sleep, my love,” she said; “and I want you to look your best to-morrow; there are several people coming to-morrow. Did she give you that great cloak, Frances? How like poor Caroline! I know the cloak quite well. It is far toooldfor you. But that is beautiful sable it is trimmed with; it will make you something. She is fond of giving presents.” Lady Markham was very quick—full of the intelligence in which Mrs Clarendon failed. She felt the instinctive loosening of her child’s hands from her own, and that the girl’s cheek was lifted from that tender pillow. “But,” she said, “we’ll say no more of that to-night,” and stooped and kissed her, and drew her covering about her with all the sweetness of that care which Frances had never received before. Nevertheless, the involuntary and horrible feeling that it was clever of her mother to stop when she did and say no more, struck chill to the girl’s very soul.
Next day Mr Ramsay came in the afternoon, and immediately addressed himself to Frances. “I hope you have not forgotten your promise, Miss Waring, to give me all therenseignements. I should not like to lose such a good chance.”
“I don’t think I have any information to give you—if it is about Bordighera, you mean. I am fond of it; but then I have lived there all my life. Constance thought it dull.”
“Ah yes, to be sure—your sister went there. But her health was perfect. I have seen her go out in the wildest weather, in days that made me shiver. She said that to see the sun always shining bored her. She liked a great deal of excitement and variety—don’t you think?” he added after a moment, in a tentative way.
“The sun does not shine always,” said Frances, piqued for the reputation of her home, as if this were an accusation. “We have grey days sometimes, and sometimes storms, beautiful storms, when the sea is all in foam.”
He shivered a little at the idea. “I have never yet found the perfect place in which there is nothing of all that,” he said. “Wherever I have been, there are cold days—even in Algiers, you know. No climate is perfect. I don’t go in much for society when I am at a health-place. It disturbs one’s thoughts and one’s temper, and keeps you from fixing your mind upon your cure, which you should always do. But I suppose you know everybody there?”
“There is—scarcely any one there,” she said, faltering, remembering at once that her father was not a person to whom to offer introductions.
“So much the better,” he said more cheerfully. “It is a thing I have often heard doctors say, that society was quite undesirable. It disturbs one’s mind. One can’t be so exact about hours. In short, it places health in a secondary place, which is fatal. I am always extremely rigid on that point. Health—must go before all. Now, dear Miss Waring, to details, if you please.” He took out a little note-book, bound in russia, and drew forth a jewelled pencil-case. “The hotels first, I beg; and then the other particulars can be filled in. We can put them under different heads:(1) Shelter; (2) Exposure; (3) Size and convenience of apartments; (4) Nearness to church, beach, &c. I hope you don’t think I am asking too much?”
“I am so glad to see that you have not given him up because of Con,” said one of Lady Markham’s visitors, talking very earnestly over the tea-table, with a little nod and gesture to indicate of whom she was speaking. “He must be very fond of you, to keep coming; or he must have some hope.”
“I think he is rather fond of me, poor Claude!” Lady Markham replied without looking round. “I am one of the oldest friends he has.”
“But Constance, you know, gave him a terrible snub. I should not have wondered if he had never entered the house again.”
“He enters the house almost every day, and will continue to do so, I hope. Poor boy, he cannot afford to throw away his friends.”
“Then that is almost the only luxury he can’t afford.”
Lady Markham smiled upon this remark. “Claude,” she said, turning round, “don’t youwant some tea? Come and get it while it is hot.”
“I am getting somerenseignementsfrom Miss Waring. It is very good of her. She is telling me all about Bordighera, which, so far as I can see, will be a very nice place for the winter,” said Ramsay, coming up to the tea-table with his little note-book in his hand. “Thanks, dear Lady Markham. A little sugar, please. Sugar is extremely nourishing, and it is a great pity to leave it out in diet—except, you know, when you are inclining to fat. Banting is at the bottom of all this fashion of doing without sugar. It is not good for little thin fellows like me.”
“I gave it up long before I ever heard of Banting,” said the stout lady: for it need scarcely be said that there was a stout lady; no tea-party in England ever assembled without one. The individual in the present case was young, and rebellious against the fate which had overtaken her—not of the soft, smiling, and contented kind.
“It does us real good,” said Claude, with his softly pathetic voice. “I have seen one or twovery sad instances where the fat did not go away, you know, but got limp and flaccid, and the last state of that man was worse than the first. Dear lady, I think you should be very cautious. To make experiments with one’s health is really criminal. We are getting on very nicely with therenseignements. Miss Waring has remembered a great deal. She thought she could not tell me anything; but she has remembered a great deal.”
“Bordighera? Is that where Constance is?” the ladies said to each other round the low tea-table where Lady Markham was so busy. She smiled upon them all, and answered “Yes,” without any tinge of the embarrassment which perhaps they hoped to see.
“But of course as a resident she is not living among the people at the hotels. You know how the people who live in a place hold themselves apart; and the season is almost over. I don’t think that either tourists or invalids passing that way are likely to see very much of Con.”
In the meantime, Frances, as young Ramsay had said, had been honestly straining hermind to “remember” what she could about the Marina and the circumstances there. She did not know anything about the east wind, and had no recollection of how it affected the place. She remembered that the sun shone in at the windows all day; which of course meant, as he informed her, a southern exposure; and that in all the hotel gardens, as well as elsewhere, there were palms growing, and hedges of lemons and orange trees; and that at the Angleterre—or was it the Victoria?—the housekeeper was English; along with other details of a similar kind. There were no balls; very few concerts or entertainments of any kind; no afternoon tea-parties. “How could there be?” said Frances, “when there were only ourselves, the Gaunts, and the Durants.”
“Only themselves, the Gaunts, and the Durants,” Ramsay wrote down in his little book. “How delightful that must be! Thank you so much, Miss Waring. Usually one has to pay for one’s experience; but thanks to you, I feel that I know all about it. It seems a place in which one could do one’s self everyjustice. I shall speak to Dr Lull about it at once. I have no doubt he will think it the very place for me.”
“You will find it dull,” said Frances, looking at him curiously, wondering was it possible that he could be sincere, or whether this was his way of justifying to himself his intention of following Constance. But nothing could be more steadily matter-of-fact than the young man’s aspect.
“Yes, no doubt I shall find it dull. I don’t so very much object to that. At Cannes and those places there is a continual racket going on. One might almost as well be in London. One is seduced into going out in the evening, doing all sorts of things. I think your place is an ideal place—plenty of sunshine and no amusements. How can I thank you enough, Miss Waring, for yourrenseignements? I shall speak to Dr Lull without delay.”
“But you must recollect that it will soon be getting very hot; and even the people who live there will be going away. Mr Durant sometimes takes the duty at Homburg or one of those places; and the Gaunts come home to England; and even we——”
Here Frances paused for a moment to watch him, and she thought that the pencil with which he was still writing down all these precious details, paused too. He looked up at her, as if waiting for further information. “Yes?” he said interrogatively.
“Even we—go up among the mountains where it is cooler,” she said.
He looked a little thoughtful at this; but presently threw her back into perplexity by saying calmly: “That would not matter to me so much, since I am quite sincere in thinking that when one goes to a health-place, one should give one’s self up to one’s health. But unfortunately, or perhaps I should say fortunately, Miss Waring, England is just as good as anywhere else in the summer; and Dr Lull has not thought it necessary this year to send me away. But I feel quite set up with yourrenseignements,” he added, putting back his book into his pocket, “and I certainly shall think of it for another year.”
Frances had been so singled out for the purpose of giving the young invalid information, that she found herself a little apart from theparty when he went away. They were all ladies, and all intimates, and the unaccustomed girl was not prepared for the onslaught of this curious and eager, though so pretty and fashionable mob. “What are thoserenseignementsyou have been giving him? Is he going off after Con? Has he been questioning you about Con? We are all dying to know. And what do you think she will say to him if he goes out after her?” cried all, speaking together, those soft eager voices, to which Frances did not know how to reply.
Francesbecame accustomed to the presence of young Ramsay after this. He appeared almost every day, very often in the afternoon, eager for tea, and always disposed to inquire for furtherrenseignements, though he was quite certain that he was not to leave England till autumn at the earliest. She began to regard him as a younger brother, or cousin at the least—a perfectly harmless individual, with whom she could talk when he wanted her with a gentle complacence, without any reference to her own pleasure. As a matter of fact, it did not give her any pleasure to talk to Claude. She was kind to him for his sake; but she had no desire for his presence on her own account. It surprised her that he ever could have been thought of as a possible mate for Constance.Constance was so much cleverer, so much more advanced in every way than herself, that to suppose she could put up with what Frances found so little attractive, was a constant amazement to the girl. She could not but express this on one of the occasions, not so very frequent as she had expected, on which her mother and she were alone together.
“Is it really true,” she said at the end of a long silence, “that there was a question of a—marriage between Constance and Mr Ramsay?”
“It is really quite true,” said her mother with a smile. “And why not? Do you disapprove?”
“It is not that I disapprove—I have no right to disapprove; it is only that it seems so impossible.”
“Why? I see nothing impossible in it. He is of suitable age; he is handsome. You cannot deny that he is handsome, however much you may dislike him, my dear.”
“But I don’t dislike him at all; I like him very much—in a kind of way.”
“You have every appearance of doing so,” said Lady Markham with meaning. “You talk to him more, I think, than to any one else.”
“That is because——”
“Oh, I don’t ask any reason, Frances. If you like his society that is reason enough—the best of reasons. And evidently he likes you. He would, no doubt, be more suitable to you than to Constance.”
“Mamma! I don’t know what you mean.” Frances woke up suddenly from her musing state, and looked at her mother with wide open startled eyes.
“I don’t mean anything. I only ask you to point out wherein his unsuitability lies. Young, handsome,nice, and very rich. What could a girl desire more? You think, perhaps, as you have been so simply brought up, that a heroine like Con should have had a Duke or an Earl at the least. But people think less of the importance of titles as they know Society better. Claude is of an excellent old family—better than many peers. She would have been a very fortunate young woman with such an establishment; but she has taken her own way. I hope you will never be so hot-headed as your sister,Frances. You look much more practical and reasonable. You will not, I think, dart off at a tangent without warning or thought.”
Frances looked her mother doubtfully in the face. Her feelings fluctuated strangely in respect to this central figure in the new world round her. To make acquaintance with your parents for the first time when you have reached the critical age, and are no longer able to accept everything with the matter-of-fact serenity of a child, is a curious experience. Children, indeed, are tremendous critics, at the tribunal of whose judgment we all stand unawares, and have our just place allotted to us, with an equity which happily leads to no practical conclusions, but which no tribunal on earth can equal for clear sight and remorseless decision. Eighteen is not quite so abstract as eight; yet the absence of familiarity, and that love which is instinctive, and happily quite above all decisions of the judgment, makes, in such an extraordinary case as that of Frances, the sudden call upon the critical faculties, the consciousness that accompanies their exercise, and the underlying sense, never absent, that all this is unnatural andwrong, into a complication full of distress and uncertainty. A vague question whether it were possible that such a conflict as that which had ended in Constance’s flight, should ever arise between Lady Markham and herself, passed through the mind of Frances. If it should do so, the expedient which had been open to Constance would be to herself impossible. All pride and delicacy of feeling, all sense of natural justice, would prevent her from adopting that course. The question would have to be worked out between her mother and herself, should it ever occur. Was it possible that it could ever occur? She looked at Lady Markham, who had returned to her usual morning occupation of writing letters, with a questioning gaze. There had been a pause, and Lady Markham had waited for a moment for a reply. Then she had taken up her pen again, and with a smiling nod had returned to her correspondence.
Frances sat and pondered with her face turned towards the writing-table, at which her mother spent so much of her time. The number of letters that were written there every morning filled her with amazement.Waring had written no letters, and received only one now and then, which Frances understood to be about business. She had looked very respectfully at first on the sheaves which were every day taken away, duly stamped, from that well-worn but much decorated writing-table. When it had been suggested to her that she too must have letters to write, she had dutifully compiled her little bulletin for her father, putting aside as quite a different matter the full chronicle of her proceedings, written at a great manyreprises, to Mariuccia, which somehow did not seem at all to come under the same description. It had, however, begun to become apparent to Frances, unwillingly, as she made acquaintance with everything about her, that Lady Markham’s correspondence was really by no means of the importance which appeared at the first glance. It seemed to consist generally in the conveyance of little bits of news, of little engagements, of the echoes of what people said and did; and it was replied to by endless shoals of little notes on every variety of tinted, gilt, and perfumed paper,with every kind of monogram, crest, and device, and every new idea in shape and form which the genius of the fashionable stationer could work out. “I have just heard from Lady So-and-so the funniest story,” Lady Markham would say to her son, repeating the anecdote—which on many occasions Frances, listening, did not see the point of. But then both mother and son were cleverer people than she was. “I must write and let Mary St Serle and Louisa Avenel know—it will amuse them so;” and there was at once an addition of two letters to the budget. Frances did not think—all under her breath, as it were, in involuntary unexpressed comment—that the tale was worth a pretty sheet of paper, a pretty envelope—both decorated with Lady Markham’s cipher and coronet—and a penny stamp. But so it was; and this was one of the principal occupations evidently of a great lady’s life. Lady Markham considered it very grave, and “a duty.” She allowed nothing to interfere with her correspondence. “I have my letters to write,” she said, as who should say, “I have my day’s work to do.” By degrees Frances lost her respect for this day’s work, and would watch the manufactory of one note after another with eyes that were unwillingly cynical, wondering within herself whether it would make any difference to the world if pen and ink were forbidden in that house. Markham, too, spoke of writing his letters as a valid reason for much consumption of time. But then, no doubt, Markham had land agents to write to, and lawyers, and other necessary people. In this, Frances did not do justice to her mother, who also had business letters to write, and did a great deal in stocks, and kept her eyes on the money market. The girl sat and watched her with a sort of fascination as her pen ran lightly over sheet after sheet. Sometimes Lady Markham was full of tenderness and generosity, and had the look of understanding everybody’s feelings. She was never unkind. She never took a bad view of any one, or suggested evil or interested motives, as even Frances perceived, in her limited experience, so many people to do. But, on the other hand, there wouldcome into her face sometimes a look—which seemed to say that she might be inexorable, if once she had made up her mind: a look before which it seemed to Frances that flight like that of Constance would be the easiest way. Frances was not sufficiently instructed in human nature to know that anomalies of this kind are common enough; and that nobody is always and in all matters good, any more than anybody is in all things ill. It troubled her to perceive the junction of these different qualities in her mother; and still more it troubled her to think what, in case of coming to some point of conflict, she should do? How would she get out of it? Would it be only by succumbing wholly, or had she the courage in her to fight it out?
“Little un,” said Markham, coming up to her suddenly, “why do you look at the mother so? Are you measuring yourself against her, to see how things would stand if it came to a fight?”
“Markham!” Frances started with a great blush of guilt. “I did not know you were here. I—never heard you come in.”
“You were so lost in thought. I have been here these five minutes, waiting for an opportunity to put in a word. Don’t you know I’m a thought-reader, like those fellows that find pins? Take my advice, Fan, and never let it come to a fight.”
“I don’t know how to fight,” she said, crimsoning more and more; “and besides, I was not thinking—there is nothing to fight about.”
“Fibs, these last,” he said. “Come out and take a little walk with me,—you are looking pale; and I will tell you a thing or two. Mother, I am going to take her out for a walk; she wants air.”
“Do, dear,” said Lady Markham, turning half round with a smile. “After luncheon, she is going out with me; but in the meantime, you could not do better—get a little of the morning into her face, while I finish my letters.” She turned again with a soft smile on her face to send off that piece of information to Louisa Avenel and Mary St Serle, closing an envelope as she spoke, writing the address with such a preoccupied yet amiable air—a woman who,but for having so much to do, would have had no thought or ambition beyond her home. Markham waited till Frances appeared in the trim little walking-dress which the mother had paid her the high compliment of making no change in. They turned their faces as usual towards the Park, where already, though Easter was very near, there was a flutter of fine company in preparation for the more serious glories of the Row, after the season had fairly set in.
“Little Fan, you mustn’t fight,” were the first words that Markham said.
She felt her heart begin to beat loud. “Markham! there is nothing to fight about—oh, nothing. What put fighting in your head?”
“Never mind. It is my duty to instruct your youth; and I think I see troubles brewing. Don’t be so kind to that little beggar Claude. He is a selfish little beggar, though he looks so smooth; and since Constance won’t have him, he will soon begin to think he may as well have you.”
“Markham!” Frances felt herself choking with horror and shame.
“You have got my name quite pat, my dear; but that is neither here nor there. Markham has nothing to do with it, except to put you on your guard. Don’t you know, you little innocent, what is the first duty of a mother? Then I can tell you: to marry her daughters well; brilliantly, if possible, but at all eventswell—or anyhow to marry them; or else she is a failure, and all the birds of her set come round her and peck her to death.”
“I often don’t understand your jokes,” said Frances, with a little dignity, “and I suppose this is a joke.”
“And you think it is a joke in doubtful taste? So should I, if I meant it that way, but I don’t. Listen, Fan; I am much of that opinion myself.”
“That a mother—that a lady——? You are always saying horrible things.”
“It is true, though—if it is best that a girl should marry—mind you, I only say if—then itisher mother’s duty. You can’t look out for yourself—at least I am very glad you are not of the kind that do, my little Fan.”
“Markham,” said Frances, with a dignity which seemed to raise her small person a foot at least, “I have never heard such things talked about; and I don’t wish to hear anything more, please. In books,” she added, after a moment’s interval, “it is the gentlemen——”
“Who look out? But that is all changed, my dear. Fellows fall in love—which is quite different—and generally fall in love with the wrong person; but you see I was not supposing that you were likely to do anything so wild as that.”
“I hope not,” cried Frances hurriedly. “However,” she added, after another pause, colouring deeply, but yet looking at him with a certain courageous air, “if there was any question about being—married, which of course there is not—I never heard that there was any other way.”
“Brava, Fan! Come, now, here is the little thing’s own opinion, which is worth a great deal. It would not matter, then, who the man was, so long asthathappened, eh? Let us know the premises on either side.”
“You are a great deal older than I am, Markham,” said Frances.
“Granted, my dear—a great deal. And what then? I should be wiser, you mean to say? But so I am, Fan.”
“It was notthatI meant. I mean, it is you who ought—to marry. You are a man. You are the eldest, the chief one of your family. I have always read in books——”
Markham put up his hand as a shield. He stopped to laugh, repeating over and over again that one note of mirth with which it was his wont to express his feelings. “Brava, Fan!” he repeated when he could speak. “You are a little Trojan. This is something like carrying the war into the enemy’s country.” He was so much tickled by the assault, that the water stood in his eyes. “What a good thing we are not in the Row, where I should have been delivered over to the talk of the town. Frances, my little dear, you are the funniest of little philosophers.”
“Where is the fun?” said Frances gravely. “And I am not a philosopher, Markham; I am only—your sister.”
At this the little man became serious all at once, and took her hand and drew it within his arm. They were walking up Constitution Hill, where there are not many spectators. “Yes, my dear,” he said, “and as nice a little sister as a man could desire;” and walked on, holding her arm close to him with an expressive clasp which spoke more than words. The touch of nature and the little suggestive proffer of affection and kindred which was in the girl’s words, touched his heart. He said nothing till they were about emerging upon the noise and clamour of the world at the great thoroughfare which they had to cross. Then “After all,” he said, “yours is a very natural proposition, Fan. It is I who ought to marry. Many people would say it is my duty; and perhaps I might have been of that opinion once. But I’ve a great deal on my conscience, dear. You think I’m rather a good little man, don’t you? fond of ladies’ society, and of my mother and little sister, which is such a good feature, everybody says? Well, but that’s a mistake, my dear. I don’t know that I am at all afit person to be walking about London streets and into the Park with an innocent little creature, such as you are, under my arm.”
“Markham!” she cried, with a tone which was half astonished, half indignant, and her arm thrilled within his—not, perhaps, with any intention of withdrawing itself; but that was what he thought.
“Wait,” he said, “till I have got you safely across the Corner—there is always a crowd—and then, if you are frightened, and prefer another chaperon, we’ll find one, you may be sure, before we have gone a dozen steps. Come now; there is a little lull. Be plucky, and keep your head, Fan.”
“I want no other chaperon, Markham; I like you.”
“Do you, my dear? Well, you can’t think what a pleasure that is to me, Fan. You wouldn’t, probably, if you knew me better. However, you must stick to that opinion as long as you can. Who, do you think, would marry me if I were to try? An ugly little fellow, not very well off, with several very bad tendencies, and—a mother.”
“A mother, Markham!”
“Yes, my dear; to whom he is devoted—who must always be the first to him. That’s a beautiful sentiment, don’t you think? But wives have a way of not liking it. I could not force her to call herself the Dowager, could I, Fan? She is a pretty woman yet. She is really younger than I am. She would not like it.”
“I think you are only making fun of me, Markham. I don’t know what you mean. What could mamma have to do with it? If she so much wanted Constance to marry, surely she must want you still more, for you are so much older; and then——”
“There is no want of arguments,” he said with a laugh, shaking his head. “Conviction is what is wanted. There might have been times when I should have much relished your advice; but nobody would have had me, fortunately. No; I must not give up the mother, my dear. Don’t you know I was the cause of all the mischief—at least of a great part of the mischief—when your father went away? And now, I must make a mess of it again,and put folly into Con’s head. The mother is an angel, Fan, or she would not trust you with me.”
It flashed across Frances’ memory that Constance had warned her not to let herself fall into Markham’s hands; but this only bewildered the girl in the softening of her heart to him, and in the general bewilderment into which she was thus thrown back. “I do not believe you can be bad,” she said earnestly; “you must be doing yourself injustice.”
By this time they were in the Row in all the brightness of the crowd, which, if less great than at a later period, was more friendly. Markham had begun to pull off his hat to every third lady he met, to put out his hand right and left, to distribute nods and greetings. “We’ll resume the subject some time or other,” he said with a smile aside to Frances, disengaging her arm from his. The girl felt as if she had suddenly lost her anchorage, and was thrown adrift upon this sea of strange faces; and thrown at the same time back into a moral chaos, full of new difficulties and wonders, out of which she could not see her way.
A dayor two after, they all went to the Priory for Easter.
The Priory was in the Isle of Wight, and it was Markham’s house. It was not a very great house, nor was it medieval and mysterious, as an unsophisticated imagination naturally expected. Its name came, it was said (or hoped), from an old ecclesiastical establishment once planted there; but the house itself was a sort of Strawberry-Hill Gothic, with a good deal of plaster and imitated ornament of the perpendicular kind,—that is to say, the worst of its kind, which is, unfortunately, that which most attracts the imitator. It stood on a slope above the beach, where the vegetation was soft and abundant, recalling more or less to the mind of Frances the aspect of the country with whichshe was best acquainted—the great bosquets of glistering green laurel and laurestine simulating the daphnes and orange-trees, and the grey downs above recalling in some degree the scattered hill-tops above the level of the olives; though the great rollers of the Atlantic which thundered in upon the beach were not like that rippling blue which edged the Riviera in so many rims of delicate colour. The differences, however, struck Frances less than the resemblance, for which she had scarcely been prepared, and which gave her a great deal of surprised pleasure at the first glance. This put temporarily out of her mind all the new and troublesome thoughts which her conversation with Markham had called forth, and which had renewed her curiosity about her step-brother, whom she had begun to receive into the landscape around her with the calm of habit and without asking any questions. Was he really bad, or rather, not good?—which was as far as Frances could go. Had he really been the cause, or partly the cause, of the separation between her father and mother? She was bewildered by these little breaks in the curtain whichconcealed the past from her so completely—that past which was so well known to the others around, which an invincible delicacy prevented her from speaking of or asking questions about. All went on so calmly around her, as if nothing out of the ordinary routine had ever been; and yet she was aware not only that much had been, but that it remained so distinctly in the minds of those smiling people as to influence their conduct and form their motives still. Though it was Markham’s house, it was his mother who was the uncontested sovereign, not less, probably more, than if the real owner had been her husband instead of her son. And even Frances, little as she was acquainted with the world, was aware that this was seldom the case. And why should not Markham at his age, which to her seemed at least ten years more than it was, be married, when it was already thought important that Constance should marry? These were very bewildering questions, and the moment to resume the subject never seemed to come.
There was a party in the house, which included Claude Ramsay, and Sir Thomas,the elder person in whom Lady Markham had thought there could be nothing particularly interesting. He was a very frequent member of the family party, all the same; and now that they were living under the same roof, Frances did not find him without interest. There was also a lady with two daughters, whose appearance was very interesting to the girl. They reminded her a little of Constance, and of the difficulty she had found in finding subjects on which to converse with her sister. The Miss Montagues knew a great many people, and talked of them continually; but Frances knew nobody. She listened with interest, but she could add nothing either to their speculations or recollections. She did not know anything about the contrivances which brought about the marriage between Cecil Gray and Emma White. She was utterly incompetent even to hazard an opinion as to what Lady Milbrook would donow; and she did not even understand about the hospitals which they visited and “took an interest” in. She tried very hard to get some little current with which she could make herself acquainted in the river oftheir talk; but nothing could be more difficult. Even when she brought out her sketch-book and opened ground upon that subject—about which the poor little girl modestly believed she knew by experience a very little—she was silenced in five minutes by their scientific acquaintance with washes, and glazing, and body colour, and the laws of composition. Frances did not know how to compose a picture. She said: “Oh no; I do not make it up in my head at all; I only do what I see.”
“You mean you don’t formulate rules,” said Maud. “Of course you don’t mean that you merely imitate, for that is tea-board style; and your drawings are quite pretty. I like that little bit of the coast.”
“How well one knows the Riviera,” said Ethel; “everybody who goes there has something to show. But I am rather surprised you don’t keep to one style. You seem to do a little of everything. Don’t you feel that flower-painting rather spoils your hand for the larger effects?”
“It wants such a very different distribution of light and shade,” said the other sister. “Youhave to calculate your tones on such a different scale. If you were working at South Kensington or any other of the good schools——”
“I should not advise her to do that—should you, Maud?—there is such a long elementary course. But I suppose you did your freehand, and all that, in the schoolroom?”
Frances did not know how to reply. She put away her little sketch with a sense of extreme humiliation. “Oh, I am afraid I am not fit to talk about it at all,” she said. “I don’t even know what words to use. It has been all imitation, as you say.”
The two young ladies smiled upon her, and reassured her. “You must not be discouraged. I am sure you have talent. It only wants a little hard work to master the principles; and then you go on so much easier afterwards,” they said. It puzzled Frances much that they did not produce their own sketches, which she thought would have been as good as a lesson to her; and it was not till long after that it dawned upon her that in this particular Maud and Ethel were defective. They knew how todo it, but could not do it; whereas she could do it without knowing how.
“How is it, I wonder,” said one of them, changing the subject after a little polite pause, which suggested fatigue, “that Mrs Winterbourn is not here this year?”
They looked at her for this information, to the consternation of Frances, who did not know how to reply. “You know I have not been long—here,” she said: she had intended to say at home, but the effort was beyond her—“and I don’t even know who Mrs Winterbourn is.”
“Oh!” they both cried; and then for a minute there was nothing more. “You may think it strange of us to speak of it,” said Maud at length; “only, it always seemed so well understood; and we have always met her here.”
“Oh, she goes everywhere,” cried Ethel. “There never was a word breathed against—— Please don’t thinkthat, from anything we have said.”
“On the contrary, mamma always says it is so wise of Lady Markham,” said Maud; “somuch better that he should always meet her here.”
Frances retired into herself with a confusion which she did not know how to account for. She did not in the least know what they meant, and yet she felt the colour rise in her cheek. She blushed for she knew not what; so that Maud and Ethel said to each other, afterwards: “She is a little hypocrite. She knew just as well as either you or I.”
Frances, however, did not know; and here was another subject about which she could not ask information. She carried away her sketch-book to her room with a curious feeling of ignorance and foolishness. She did not know anything at all—neither about her own surroundings, nor about the little art which she was so fond of, in which she had taken just a little pride, as well as so much pleasure. She put the sketches away with a few hasty tears, feeling troubled and provoked, and as if she could never look at them with any satisfaction, or attempt to touch a pencil again. She had never thought they were anything great; but to be made to feel so foolish in her own littleway was hard. Nor was this the only trial to which she was exposed. After dinner, retiring, which she did with a sense of irritation which her conscience condemned, from the neighbourhood of Ethel and Maud, she fell into the hands of Sir Thomas, who also had a way of keeping very clear of these young ladies. He came to where Frances was standing in a corner, almost out of sight. She had drawn aside one edge of the curtain, and was looking out upon the shrubbery and the lawn, which stood out against the clear background of the sea—with a great deal of wistfulness, and perhaps a secret tear or two in her eyes. Here she was startled by a sudden voice in her ear. “You are looking out on the moonlight,” Sir Thomas said. It took her a moment before she could swallow the sob in her throat.
“It is very bright; it is a little like—home.” This word escaped her in the confusion of her thoughts.
“You mean the Riviera. Did you like it so much? I should have thought—— But no doubt, whatever the country is which we call home, it seems desirable to us.”
“Oh, but you can’t know how beautiful it is,” cried Frances, roused from her fit of despondency. “Perhaps you have never been there?”
“Oh yes, often. Does your father like it as well as you do, Miss Waring? I should have supposed, for a man——”
“Yes,” said Frances, “I know what you mean. They say there is nothing to do. But my father is not a man to want to do anything. He is fond of books; he reads all day long, and then comes out into the loggia with his cigarette—and talks to me.”
“That sounds very pleasant,” said Sir Thomas with a smile, taking no notice of the involuntary quaver that had got into the girl’s voice. “But I wonder if perhaps he does not want a little variety, a little excitement? Excuse me for saying so. Men, you know, are not always so easily contented as the better half of creation; and then they are accustomed to larger duties, to more action, to public affairs.”
“I don’t think papa takes much interest in all that,” said Frances with an air of authority.“He has never cared for what was going on. The newspapers he sometimes will not open.”
“That is a great change. He used to be a hot politician in the old days.”
“Did you know my father?” she cried, turning upon him with a glow of sudden interest.
“I knew him very well—better than most people. I was one of those who felt the deepest regret——”
She stood gazing at him with her face lifted to him with so profound an interest and desire to know, that he stopped short, startled by the intensity of her look. “Miss Waring,” he said, “it is a very delicate subject to talk to their child upon.”
“Oh, I know it is. I don’t like to ask—and yet it seems as if I ought to know.” Frances was seized with one of those sudden impulses of confidence which sometimes make the young so indiscreet. If she had known Sir Thomas intimately, it would not have occurred to her; but as a stranger, he seemed safe. “No one has ever told me,” she added in the heat of this sudden overflow, “neitherhow it was or why it was—except Markham, who says it was his fault.”
“There were faults on all sides, I think,” said Sir Thomas. “There always are in such cases. No one person is able to carry out such a prodigious mistake. You must pardon me if I speak plainly. You are the only person whom I can ask about my old friend.”
“Oh, I like you to speak plainly,” cried Frances. “Talk to me about him; ask me anything you please.” The tears came into her voice, and she put her hands together instinctively. She had been feeling very lonely and home-sick, and out of accord with all her surroundings. To return even in thought to the old life and its associations brought a flood of bitter sweetness to her heart.
“I can see at least,” said Sir Thomas, “that he has secured a most loving champion in his child.”
This arrested her enthusiasm in a moment. She was too sincere to accept such a solution of her own complicated feelings. Was she the loving champion which she was so suddenly assumed to be? She became vaguely awarethat the things which had rushed back upon her mind and filled her with longing were not the excellences of her father, but rather the old peace and ease and ignorance of her youthful life, which nothing could now restore. She could not respond to the confidence of her father’s friend. He had kept her in ignorance; he had deceived her; he had not made any attempt to clear the perplexities of her difficult path, but left her to find out everything, more perhaps than she yet knew. Sir Thomas was a little surprised that she made him no reply; but he set it down to emotion and agitation, which might well take from so young and innocent a girl the possibility of reply.
“I don’t know whether I am justified in the hope I have been entertaining ever since you came,” he said. “It is very hard that your father should be banished from his own country and all his duties by—what was, after all, never a very important cause. There has been no unpardonable wrong on either side. He is terribly sensitive, you know. And Lady Markham—she is a dear friend of mine; I have a great affection for her——”
“If you please,” said Frances quickly, “it is not possible for me to listen to any discussion of mamma.”
“My dear Miss Waring,” he cried, “this is better and better. You are then a partisan on both sides?”
Poor little Frances felt as if she were at least hemmed in on both sides, and without any way of escape. She looked up in his face with an appeal which he did not understand, for how was it possible to suppose that she did not know all about a matter which had affected her whole life?
“Don’t you think,” said Sir Thomas, drawing very close to her, stooping over her, “that if we two were to lay our heads together, we might bring things to a better understanding? Constance, to whom I have often spoken on the subject, knew only one side—and that not the difficult side. Markham was mixed up in it all, and could never be impartial. But you know both, and your father best. I am sure you are full of sense, as Waring’s daughter ought to be. Don’t you think——”
He had taken both Frances’ hands in hisenthusiasm, and pressed so closely upon her that she had to retreat a step, almost with alarm. And he had his back to the light, shutting her out from all succour, as she thought. It was all the girl could do to keep from crying out that she knew nothing,—that she was more ignorant than any one; and when there suddenly came from behind Sir Thomas the sound of many voices, without agitation or special meaning, her heart gave a bound of relief, as if she had escaped. He gave her hands a vehement pressure and let them drop; and then Claude Ramsay’s voice of gentle pathos came in. “Are you not afraid, Miss Waring, of the draught? There must be some door or window open. It is enough to blow one away.”
“You look like a couple of conspirators,” said Markham. “Fan, your little eyes are blinking like an owl’s. Come back, my dear, into the light.”
“No,” said Claude; “the light here is perfect. I never can understand why people should want so much light only to talk by. Will you sit here, Miss Waring? Here is acorner out of the draught. I want to say something more about Bordighera—one other littlerenseignement, and then I shall not require to trouble you any more.”
Frances looked at Markham for help, but he did not interfere. He looked a little grave, she thought; but he took Sir Thomas by the arm, and presently led him away. She was too shy to refuse on her own account Claude’s demand, and sat down reluctantly on the sofa, where he placed himself at her side.
“Your sister,” he said, “never had much sympathy with me about draughts. She used to think it ridiculous to take so much care. But my doctrine always is, take care beforehand, and then you don’t need to trouble yourself after. Don’t you think I am right?”
She understood very well how Constance would receive his little speeches. In the agitation in which she was, gleams of perception coming through the chaos, sudden visions of Constance, who had been swept out of her mind by the progress of events, and of her father, whom her late companion had been talking about—as if it would be so easy to inducehim to change all his ways, and do what other people wished!—came back to her mind. They seemed to stand before her there, both appearing out of the mists, both so completely aware of what they wanted to do—so little likely to be persuaded into some one else’s mode of thought.