Tears started to her eyes; but she crushed her emotion, and, with a quick, impatient little hand, rang for her waiting-maid.
Still intent upon his Continental scheme, and somewhat impatiently waiting the arrival of Jerry Vane, Trevor Chute was idling over a late breakfast, so full of thoughts—sweet, regretful, and angry thoughts—of Clare Collingwood that he seemed like one in a dream.
It was nearly noon. The sun of May was bathing in light the leafy foliage of the Green Park, and throwing its shadows darkly and strongly on the green below; while the far extent of the lofty street seemed all aglow and quivering in the sunshine.
How fair and fresh the world looked, and yet, since his last interview with Clare, everything seemed indistinct and unusual to his senses.
'Bah!' thought he; 'to-night Jerry and I shall be in France, and then——'
Whatthen, he scarcely knew.
The current of his ideas changed, for times there were, and this became one of them, when he longed morbidly to go through all the luxury of grief and sentiment in taking that which he had never before taken, save by letter—a last farewell of her; to beg of her to let no hour of sorrow for him mar her peace, no regret for his loss of fortune, a loss that was no fault of his own; to think of him with no pain, but with a soft memory of their past love, or to forget him, though he never could, or should, forgether, but would ever treasure in his heart how dear she had been to him, etc., etc.; and in this mood he was indulging, when his valet laid before him a note, the envelope of which caused him to feel a kind of electric shock.
It bore the Collingwood crest.
With hands tremulous as those of an agitated girl, he tore it open, and found that it was from Sir Carnaby Collingwood—a brief invitation to dine with him at his club at eight to-morrow evening (if disengaged), 'that they might have a little talk over old times.'
'Old times,' he repeated; 'what does that phrase mean?'
He had read over the note for the fourth or fifth time when Jerry Vane arrived.
He, too, had a similar invitation, but in that there was nothing remarkable, as he had never ceased to be on terms of intimacy with Sir Carnaby.
'Whatcanold Collingwood mean by this invitation to smoke the calumet of peace?' exclaimed Trevor Chute.
'Time will show.'
'After the cutting tenor of the letter he sent me—that cold and formal letter of dismissal—I—I——'
'Forget it, like the good fellow you are; and remember only that he is the father of Clare Collingwood.'
'True.'
'You'll go, of course?' said Jerry, after a pause; but Chute was silent.
His pride suggested that under all the circumstances, especially if what 'the clubs said' were true, he should decline the invitation.
But why?
He had already been at the Collingwoods', but on a special mission, certainly.
Then Sir Carnaby was proud, and it was impossible to forget that the first formal advance had come from him. More than all, as Jerry Vane had said, he was the father of Clare, of her who had never ceased to be the idol of all his thoughts.
'By Jove, I'll go—and you, Jerry,' he exclaimed. 'Of course.'
Each dashed off an acceptance, and they were despatched to Pall Mall in the care of Trevor's valet.
After a time, as if repenting of his sudden facility, Trevor Chute muttered:
'He used barely to bow to me in the Row or in the streets after he gave me mycongé. What the deuce can his object be? Is he—is he relenting?'
The pulsation of Chute's heart quickened at the idea, and the colour deepened in his bronzed cheek.
'How anomalous and singular is the position in which we both stand with this selfish old fellow and his daughters,' said he to Jerry as they ascended the stately marble staircase of the baronet's club next evening, and gave their cards to a giant in livery, with the small head and enormous calves and feet peculiar to the fraternity of the shoulder-knot.
As they were ushered into a lofty and magnificent room, the great windows of which opened to Pall Mall, Sir Carnaby took their cards mechanically from the silver salver, but seemed chiefly intent on bowing out a tall and fashionable-looking man, whose leading characteristics were languor of gait and bearing, with insipid blue eyes, and a bushy, sandy-coloured moustache.
'And you won't dine with us, Desmond?' he was saying.
'Impossible, thanks very much,' drawled the other. 'Then I have your full permission, Sir Carnaby?'
'With all my warmest wishes, my dear fellow,' responded the baronet cordially; and, hat in hand, the visitor bowed himself out, with a brief kind of stare at Trevor Chute, whose face, he thought, he somehow remembered, and a dry shake of the hand with Jerry Vane, whom he knew.
He was gone, 'with full permission,' to do what?
Chute's heart foreboded at that moment all the two words meant, and the next he found himself cordially greeted by the man whose son-in-law he had once so nearly been.
'Ha, Captain Chute, welcome back from India,' he exclaimed. 'By Jove, how brown you look—brown as a berry, Violet said—after potting tigers, and all that sort of thing; too much for Beverley, though. Poor Jack—good fellow, Beverley, but rash, I fear. Very glad to thank you in person for all your kindness to him and to poor Ida. Most kind of you both, I am sure, to come on so hurried an invitation.'
Of Beverley and Ida, with reference to the death of the first, and the grief of the second, he spoke in the same jaunty and smiling way that he did of the beauty of the weather, the brilliance of the London season, the topics before the House last night, or anything else, and laughingly he led the way to dinner, the courses of which were perfect, and included all manner of far-fetched luxuries, even to pigeons stewed in champagne, and other culinary absurdities.
Sir Carnaby did not seem one day older than when Trevor Chute had seen him last, and yet he had attained to those years when most men age rapidly.
He had been a singularly handsome man in that time which he was exceedingly loath to convince himself had departed—his youth.
His firm, though thin—very thin—figure was still erect, well-stayed, and padded, perhaps; his eyes were keen and bright, their smile as insincere, artificial, and hollow as it had been forty years Before. His cheek was not pale, for there was a suspicious dash of red about it, while his well-shaved hair and ragged moustache were dyed beyond a doubt, like his curled whiskers.
His mouth was perhaps weak and rather sensual; he had thin white diaphanous hands, with carefully trimmed nails and sparkling diamond rings. In general accuracy of costume he might have passed for a tailor's model, while to Chute's eye his feet were as small, his boots as glazed, as ever; yet he had undergone the tortures of the gout, drunk colchicum with toast and water till he shuddered at the thoughts thereof, and talked surreptitiously of high and dry localities as being most suitable for his health.
He had, as we have said, keen—others averred rather wicked—grey eyes, a long and thin aristocratic nose, on which, when ladies werenotpresent, he sometimes perched a gold eyeglass. He was certainly wrinkled about the face; but his smooth white forehead showed no line of thought or care, as he had never known either, yet death had more than once darkened his threshold, and hung above it a scutcheon powdered with tears. He had still the appearance of what he was—a well-shaved, well-dressed, and well 'got-up' old beau and man about town, and still flattered himself that he was not without interest in a pretty girl's eye.
He had the reputation of being a courtly and well-bred man; and yet, in his present hilarity, or from some inexplicable cause, he had the bad taste to refer in his jaunty way to his past relations with Trevor Chute, and to mingle them with some praises of his recent visitor.
'Good style of fellow, Desmond!—devilish good style, you know; has a nice place in Hants, and no end of coal-pits near the Ribble,' he continued, after the decanters had been replenished more than once. 'Wishes to stand well with Clare—yourold flame, Chute; got over all that sort of thing long ago, of course, for, as a lady writer says, "nothing on earth is so pleasant as being a little in love, and nothing on earth so destructive as being too much so." Desmond has my best wishes—but, Chute, the decanters stand with you.'
Chute exchanged one brief and lightning-like glance with Jerry Vane; he felt irrepressible disgust, and for this stinging tone to him would have hated the heartless old man but that he was the father of (as he now deemed her) his lost Clare Collingwood. But Jerry was made to wince too.
'Your visit the other day, Chute, seems quite to have upset poor Ida,' said he, after an awkward pause.
'So sorry to hear you say so, Sir Carnaby,' replied Chute, drily.
'I don't like girls to betray emotion on every frivolous occasion; it is bad form, you know.'
Frivolous occasion! thought Chute, receiving the last relics and mementoes of her husband from the comrade in whose arms he died, and who commanded the funeral party that fired over him.
'She has begun to mope more horribly than ever during the last few days; but if I take her down to the country, she becomes more dull than ever, or goes in for parochial work—bad style of things, I think—blankets and coals—Dorcas meetings—and helps the rector's wife in matters of soup and psalm-singing.'
Indeed, if the truth were known, Sir Carnaby Collingwood was not ill pleased by Beverley's death, all things considered. Ida's jointure was most ample—even splendid—and she had no little heir to attend to. To be the father of these grown-up girls was bad enough, he thought; but to have been a 'grandfather' would prove the culmination of horror to the would-be youthful beau of sixty.
His own lover and romance, if he ever had any—which may be doubted—were put by and forgotten years ago, and he never dreamed that others might indulge in such dreams apart from the prose of life. From his school-days he had been petted, pampered, and caressed by wealth and fortune, so much so that he was actually ignorant of human wants, ailments, or sufferings. Hence his utter callousness and indifference in such a matter as Trevor Chute's love for Clare, or her love for Chute. Though his dead wife, a fair and gentle creature, who was the antitype of Ida, and had been quite as lovely, loved him well, he had married her without an atom of affection, to suit the views of his family and her own.
Hence it was that, as we have shown, he could talk in the manner he did to his two guests—men whose past relations with his own household were of a nature so delicate, and to be approached with difficulty; yet, had anyone accused Sir Carnaby of want of tact or taste, or more than all of ill-breeding, he would have been filled with astonishment. But the ill-breeding shown by Sir Carnaby simply resulted from a total want of feeling, good taste, and perception.
Thus it was that he could coolly expatiate to Chute on the good qualities of Desmond, adding, 'You'll be glad to hear of my girl's welfare and expectations; he'll be a peer, you know, some of these days; and to poor Jerry Vane upon Ida's grief for the loss of her husband,hisrival.
Then, while smoothing his dyed moustache with a dainty girl-like handkerchief, all perfume and point, with a Collingwood crest in the corner thereof, he would continue in this fashion:
'Poverty is a nuisance. I have admired dowerless girls in my day—do so still—but never go farther than mere admiration; so no girl of mine shall ever marry any man who cannot keep her in the style to which she has been accustomed. It was, perhaps, a foolish match Ida made with Beverley, though he had that snug place in the Midlands—or rather, the reversion of it when his father died; but now she is a widow—ha! ha! bless my soul, that I should be the father of a widow!—and with her natural attractions, enhanced by a handsome dowry, may yet be a peeress—who knows?'
Jerry Vane, with silent rage swelling in his heart, glanced at Chute, as much as to say:
'How intolerable—how detestable—all this is!'
'She is a widow,' continued Sir Carnaby, eyeing fondly the ruby wine in his glass, as he held it between him and the lustre, with one eye closed for a moment, 'but with all her attractions, may perhaps remain so if she continues this horrible folly of unfathomable grief, and all that sort of thing.'
'It does honour to her heart!' sighed poor Jerry.
'She is becoming an enthusiast and a visionary. The girl's grief bores me, and times there are when I wish that you, friend Vane, may come to the rescue, after all.'
A little smile flitted across the face of Vane as he merely bowed to this remark, which he cared not to follow, as he was doubtful whether it was the baronet or his wine that was talking now; but he glanced at Trevor Chute, and both rose to depart, thinking they had now quite enough of Sir Carnaby's 'hospitality.'
But the latter, seized by a sudden access of friendship or familiarity, on finding that he could no longer prevail on them to remain, proposed, as the night was fine, and their ways lay together, to walk so far and enjoy a cigar.
It was impossible to decline this: the 'weeds' were lit; Sir Carnaby took an arm of each—perhaps his steps were a little unsteady—and as they turned away towards Piccadilly, he began anew to sing the praises of Desmond, with the pertinacity with which wine will sometimes make a man recur again and again to the same subject.
'Good style of fellow, and all that sort of thing, don't you know, Chute? Has a fortune—comfortable thing that—very!—but it has prevented—it has prevented——'
'What, Sir Carnaby?' asked Trevor, wearily.
'The development of his genius.'
Trevor Chute laughed aloud at this, and said:
'Ah! there is nothing like a hand-to-hand free fight with the world forthat.'
'You are a soldier, Chute, but the world is no longer a bivalve, which one may, like ancient Pistol, open by the sword. Desmond graduated at Oxford.'
'As stroke oar, Sir Carnaby, I presume.'
'He would have taken the highest honours, Chute, and all that sort of thing, don't you know, only—only——'
'He could not?'
'Not at all,' replied Sir Carnaby, somewhat tartly. 'He preferred that they should be taken, Chute, by those who set their hearts on such things; yet for Clare's sake, I wish——'
Whatever it was he wished, Trevor Chute never learned, for now he lost all patience, and affecting suddenly to remember another engagement, bade farewell, curtly and hurriedly, to Sir Carnaby, who said:
'Must have you down at Carnaby Court when the event—perhaps the double event—comes off; good style of old place—the baronial, the mediæval, the picturesque, and all that sort of thing—bored by artists and tourists, don't you know, but, of course, you remember it—ta-ta!'
And arresting skilfully an undeniable hiccup, the senile baronet trotted, or rather 'toddled,' away in the moonlight. Remember it!
Well and sadly did Trevor Chute remember it; for there, on a soft autumn night, when the music and the hum of the dancers' voices came through the ball-room oriels, when the moonlight steeped masses of the ancient pile in silver sheen or sunk them in shadow—
'When buttresses and buttresses alternatelySeem framed of ebon or ivory,'
as he and Clare stole forth for one delicious moment from the conservatory, had he first told her how deeply and tenderly he loved her; and now again memories of the waltz they had just concluded, of the delicate perfume of her floating dress, of the scarlet flower in her dark hair, of the drooping, downcast eyes, and her lovely lips, near which his own were hovering, come vividly back to haunt him, as they had done many a time and oft when he had seen the same moon that lit up prosaic Piccadilly shining in its Orient splendour on the marble domes and towers of Delhi, on the waters of the Jumna or the Indus, and on the snow-clad peaks that look down, from afar, on the vast plains of Assam!
Now that their old tormentor was gone, both Chute and Jerry Vane laughed, but with much of scornful bitterness in their merriment.
'Hope you enjoyed your dinner, Jerry!'
'Hereditary rank is very noble, according to Burke and Debrett,' replied Vane, cynically. 'He is a baronet, true; but I would rather win a title than succeed to one; and to meet a few more men like Sir Carnaby would make a down-right Republican of me.'
'How such an empty fool ever had a daughter like Clare Collingwood is a riddle to me. He is so cool, so listless, so heartless——'
'Yet so thoroughbred, as it is deemed!'
'And so worldly—she, all heart!'
'Perhaps; but what does all this about Desmond mean, eh, friend Trevor?'
'A little time will show now,' said the other, bitterly.
It was the noon of the following day when Major Desmond ordered his mail phaeton, and drove to the mansion of the Collingwoods to avail himself of the 'permission' granted to him so fully by Sir Carnaby on the evening before.
The hour was somewhat early for a usual call; but as anami de la maison, and considering the errand on which he was come, Desmond thought he might venture to take the liberty, and he felt a kind of pleasure in the belief that he would surprise his intended, for he came with the full resolution of sacrificing himself at last, and making a proposal to Clare, and feeling apparently as cool in the matter as if he were going to buy a horse at Tattersall's.
Miss Collingwood was at home and disengaged; Miss Violet and Mrs. Beverley were out driving; so all seemed to favour the object he had in view, and he was ushered into the drawing-room. His name was announced; but Clare, who was seated at a writing-table, with a somewhat abstracted air, did not hear it, as she was intently perusing a tiny note she had just written. She seemed agitated, too, for her eyes bore unmistakable traces of tears.
Agitation was so unusual with her, and indeed with anyone Desmond met in society, that he paused with some surprise, standing irresolutely near her, hat in hand; and as he watched the contour of her head with a gleam of sunshine in her braided hair, the curve of her shoulders, the pure beauty of her profile, the grace of the tender white neck encircled by its frill of tulle, and the quick movement of the lovely little hand, as she rapidly closed and addressed the note, he thought what a creditable-looking wife she would be to show the world—aye, even the world of London.
There seemed something of a sad expression on her usually serene face; but he knew not then that her heart was beating with a new joy—yea, that 'it throbbed like a bird's heart when it is wild with the first breath of spring.'
Suddenly his figure caught her eye.
'Major Desmond, pray pardon me; I did not hear you announced.'
'I fear, Miss Collingwood'—he could not at that moment trust himself to say 'Clare'—'that I intrude upon your privacy,' and the nearest approach to anger and surprise that the usually imperturbable and impassive Desmond could permit himself to manifest appeared in his face when he saw her, with a rapidity, and even with something of alarm, which she could not or cared not to conceal, thrust the recently addressed envelope into the Marguerite pouch—the same in which Trevor Chute had seen her place a note from Desmond on the coaching day; but that referred only to a bet of gloves and the coming Derby.
All this seemed terribly unwonted, and the deduction instantly drawn by the tall guardsman was that a note thus concealed was not intended for one of her own sex.
'You do not intrude,' said Clare, timidly, yet composedly. 'I am, as you see, quite alone—my sisters have gone to the Park.'
Desmond was too well bred to make any direct allusion either to Clare's emotion or the matter of the note, to which that emotion gave an importance it otherwise could not merit; but he was nevertheless anxious for some light on the episode.
'You dined with papa yesterday?' said Clare, after a pause.
'I had to deny myself that pleasure, being otherwise engaged; but he had an oldfriendwith him,' replied Desmond, tugging his moustache as he accentuated the word; 'and I have come here with his express permission,' he added; but instead of seating himself, he drew very near, and bent over her, with tenderness in his tone and manner.
'Express permission?' repeated Clare, lifting her clear, bright eyes composedly to his.
'Yes—to take you out for a ride; we may join Sir Carnaby and my sister, who——'
He paused, for this wasnotwhat he came to say; but he felt an awkwardness in the situation, and the perfect coolness or apparent unconsciousness of Clare put him out, all the more so that now a smile stole over her face.
Vanity and admiration of her beauty had made him dangle so much about Clare, that he felt the time was come when 'something must be done.'
He had come to do that 'something'—to propose, in short; and now, with all hisinsouciance, he had a doubt that, if it did not give him pain, certainly piqued his pride; and he actually hoped that visitors might interrupt thetête-à-tête.
But he hoped in vain; the hour was too early for callers.
Clare's smile brightened; but there was an undeniable curl on her lovely lip.
He had just enough of lazy tenderness in his manner, with something in his tone and eye which seemed to indicate what he had in view, and yet seemed unmistakably to say: 'I can't act the lover, so why the deuce do I come here to talk nonsense?'
'My mail phaeton is at the door; shall I send for my horse and ring for yours?' he asked.
'Excuse me—I have a headache this morning.'
'So sorry; but, perhaps, you may be better amused at home.'
'How, Major?' asked Clare.
'With books, music, or—or correspondence.'
At the last word shedidcolour, he saw, a very little.
'Ladies have a thousand ways of passing time that men don't possess,' he added, lapsing into his habitual bearing, which in his style of man some one describes as 'gentle and resigned weariness.'
It actually seemed too much trouble to make love when the matter became serious.
There was a pause, after which, for a change of subject, Clare asked about the horse he was to run in the Derby.
'Oh! Crusader is in capital form,' said he with animation, as this was a subject to be approached with ease. 'Though neither a large nor a powerful horse, he is "blood" all over, and there is no better animal in the stud book!'
'I know that he stands high in the betting.'
'How?'
'From the racing column in theTimes.'
'Ah, you take an interest in my horse, then!'
'Of course,' replied Clare, smiling, thinking of her bets in gloves; 'a very deep interest.'
Encouraged by this trivial remark, he thought to himself, 'Hang it—here goes!' and while there occurred vaguely to his lazy mind recollections of all he had read of proposals, and seen of them on the stage, he took her hand in his, and said abruptly:
'Miss Collingwood—Clare—dearest Clare—will you be my wife? Will you marry me—love me—and all that, don't you know?'
Clare withdrew her hand, and slightly elevated her proud eyebrows, which were dark and straight rather than arched, while something of a dangerous and then of a droll sparkle came into her dreamy and beautiful eyes, for neither the tone nor the mode of the proposal proved pleasing to her, in her then mood of mind especially.
'Excuse me, Major Desmond,' said she, scarcely knowing how to frame her reply, 'you have done me an honour, which—which I must, however, decline.'
'Just now, perhaps; but—but in time, dearest Clare?'
'Your sister may call me that; but to you I am Miss Collingwood.'
'Shall I ever get beyond that?' he urged, in a soft tone.
'I do not know,' murmured Clare, doubtfully; for she knew what her father wished and expected of her; 'but as yet let us be friends as we have been, and not talk of marriage, I implore you.'
'Deuced odd!' thought the Major, who, perhaps, felt relieved in his mind.
Clare knew well the calm, half-passionless, andinsouciantworld of the Major and his 'set,' her own 'set' too; she was not surprised; she had ere now expected some such declaration or proposal as this from Desmond; but certainly, with all his inanity, and perhaps stupidity, she expected it to be made in other terms, and with more ardour and earnestness; and at the moment he spoke her memory flashed back to the same moonlight night of which Trevor Chute had thought and remembered so vividly when he parted from her father but a few hours before.
While Desmond was considering what to say next, it chanced that Clare drew her handkerchief from the Marguerite pouch, and with it the note, which fell at the feet of her visitor. Ere she was aware, he had picked it up, and saw that it was addressed toTrevor Chute.
With a greater sense of irritation, pique, and even jealousy than he thought himself capable of feeling—certainly than ever he felt before—he presented it to her, saying blandly:
'You have dropped a note, Miss Collingwood—addressed to some one at the "Rag," I think.'
'Oh, thanks,' she replied in a voice with the slightest tinge of alarm and annoyance.
'Have you many correspondents there?' he ventured to ask, with the slightest approach to a sneer, as he placed his glass in his eye.
'Only one,' replied Clare, now thoroughly irritated. 'Captain Chute—Trevor Chute—perhaps you have heard of him.'
'Yes; does Sir Carnaby know of this correspondence?'
'No,' she replied, a little defiantly.
The Major began to feel himself, as he would have phrased it, 'nowhere,' and to wish that he hadnotcalled that morning. There ensued a break in the conversation which was embarrassing to both, till Clare, who was the first to recover her equanimity, said with a smile, as she deemed some explanation due, if not to him, at least to herself:
'It is to Trevor—to Captain Chute—concerning poor Ida—not on any affair of mine, be assured; but,' she added, colouring a little, 'you will not mention this circumstance to—to papa?'
'You have my word, Miss Collingwood; and now good-morning.'
He left her with coldness of manner, but only a little; for whatever he thought, he deemed it bad style to discover the least emotion. But he felt that even in a small way, in virtue of his promised secrecy, he and Clare had a secret understanding. Why had she been so afraid that he should know of her correspondence with this fellow Chute, who he understood had been a discarded admirer of hers in her first season; and why keep her father in ignorance of it, when Chute was the old man's guest but yesterday?
It was, he thought, altogether one of those things 'no fellow can understand,' and drove off in his mail phaeton to visit Crusader in his loose box.
Clare remained full of thought after he had gone, and the note had been despatched to Trevor Chute; she felt none of the excitement a proposal might cause in another. She was, in fact, more annoyed than fluttered or flattered by it. Yet Clare felt a need for loving some one and being beloved in turn. It is a necessity in every female, perhaps every true human heart.
Clare had certainly many admirers, but she was always disposed to criticise them, and the woman who criticises a man rarely ends by loving him; so since that old time, to which we have already referred, she had gone through the world of gaiety heart-free; and though mingling much in society, she had somehow made a little world of her own—a species of independent existence, and even preferred the retirement of their country home, with a few pleasant visitors, of course, and weaving out schemes of benevolence to the tenantry, to the whirl of life in London, with its balls, drums, crushes, and at-homes, attending sometimes three in the same evening, as it was called, though the early morning was glittering on the silver harness as the carriage drove her home.
Though the proposal of Desmond had excited not the least emotion in the heart of Clare Collingwood, it caused some unpleasant and unwelcome thoughts to arise, and at such a time as this more than ever did she miss her mother, whose affection and counsel were never wanting. She had a dread of her father, and of his cold and cutting, yet withal courtly, way of addressing her, when in any way, however lightly, she displeased him, and now she feared intuitively that she would do so, or had done so, in a serious manner.
She knew how much he was under the influence of the Desmonds, and felt assured that something unpleasant would come out of that morning's episode; and apart from having such a husband as the Major, even with his great wealth and prospective title, too, Clare felt that she could not tolerate the close relationship of his sister, apassébelle, horsey in nature and style, who had been engaged in intrigues and flirtations that were unnumbered, and more than once had made a narrow escape from being a source of downright scandal, for the Honourable Evelyn Desmond was fast—undeniably very fast indeed for an unmarried lady, and the queen of a fast set, too—yet it never reached the ears of Clare, though the rumour went current that she had dined at Richmond and elsewhere with Sir Carnaby Collingwood and some of the fastest men in the Brigade, and without any other chaperon than her brother. But then the baronet was more than old enough to be her father, with whom a late conversation now recurred to Clare's memory. While talking of Desmond, she had remarked:
'I am surprised, papa, that, with all her opportunities, his sister does not get married.'
'Why?' he asked, curtly.
'She has now been out for seven or eight seasons—even more, I think—and is getting quitepassé!
'Yet she is much admired; besides, Clare, it is not her place to make proposals.'
'Of course not.'
'Nor is it every proposal she would accept, any more than yourself,' said the baronet, with a loftiness of manner.
'She seems to dazzle without touching men's hearts.'
'Indeed!'
'Papa, how sententious you have become! But really I don't think Evelyn will ever be married at all.'
'Time will show, Clare—time will show,' chuckled Sir Carnaby, showing all his brilliantly white Parisian teeth.
'It will not be her fault if she isnot, papa,' said Violet, who had a special dislike to the lady in question. 'I wonder how long she has studied the language of the flowers in the conservatory with old Colonel Rakes' son?'
'Why?'
'And never gothimto propose, I mean, papa. Her eyes are handsome, yet they smiled exclusively, for the time, on young Rakes.'
'Violet!'
'One good flirtation, she told me, always led to another.'
'Surely that is notherstyle,' said Sir Carnaby, with some asperity; 'and I have to request, Miss Violet, that you will not speak in this rough manner of any lady in the position of Miss Desmond.'
This and many similar conversations of the kind now recurred to Clare, and led her to dread her father's questions, and perhaps his lectures, on the subject, and she began to feel sadness and doubt.
From these thoughts she was roused by the entrance of a servant, who said:
'Miss Collingwood, a jeweller's man is here with the jewels from Bond Street for your inspection.'
'Thejewels! what jewels? I ordered none,' said Clare.
'He 'ave Sir Carnaby's card, miss,' replied the man, pulling his long whiskers, in imitation of Desmond and others.
The man entered with a mincing step, and bowed very low, announcing the name of the firm he represented, and unlocking a handsome walnut and brass-bound box, took out the morocco cases, and unclasping them, displayed, to the surprise of Clare, three magnificent suites of diamond ornaments, all set in gold and blue enamel, reposing on the whitest of velvet. In each suite were a tiara, pendant ear-rings, and a necklace, each and all worth several thousand pounds.
'Oh, such lovely jewels!' exclaimed Violet, who came in at the moment, and with a burst of girlish delight; 'these diamonds are fit for a prince or a maharajah! Clare! Clare! are they meant for you?'
'They are submitted for inspection and choice.'
'What can this mean? There is some mistake,' replied Clare, colouring with extreme annoyance. If they came by her father's order, they came as a bribe; if from Desmond, they could not be left for a moment! 'Did Sir Carnaby give his address?' she asked.
'No, miss; he simply ordered the three sets to be sent on approval, and I brought them here. This is Sir Carnaby's card.'
'They are all too large—much too large for me,' said Clare, hastily. 'Take them away, please, and I shall ask Sir Carnaby about them when he returns.'
The man bowed, returned the jewels to their cases, and was ushered out.
'Oh, papa, how kind of you!' exclaimed Violet, apostrophizing the absent. 'Are you sure, Clare, that these three lovely suites were not for us?'
'I am sure of—nothing, Violet: I don't know what to think,' replied Clare, wearily, and with an unmistakable air of annoyance. 'The Collingwood jewels are enough for us all, Violet.'
Ignorant of the little scene that had passed in the Collingwoods' drawing-room, Trevor Chute felt only something very nearly amounting to transports of rage when he thought of all that had occurred overnight at Sir Carnaby's club. The callous remarks of the frivolous old man stung him to the heart. So Clare as well as her father had blotted him out of their selfish world, and Desmond was the man who took his place!
Love, doubt, indignation, and jealousy tormented him by turns, or all together at once: love for Clare—the dear old love that had never died within him, and that, seeing her again and hearing her voice, had roused in all its former strength and tenderness; doubt whether she were worthy of it, and whether he had a place yet in her heart; indignation at the underbred indifference of her father to whatever he might think or feel, and jealousy of the influence of Desmond with them both.
Nor were the visions of hope and revenge absent. He pondered that if she loved him—if she still loved him—why leave it unknown? why should he trifle with himself and her? Why tamper with fate? Why not marry her in spite of her father and Desmond, too? In mere revenge he might make Clare his own, after all!
Then second, and perhaps better, thoughts came anon; for Trevor Chute, though to his friends apparently but an ordinary good fellow in most respects, a mere captain of the line, and so forth, was in spirit as genuine a soldier and a knight as chivalrous as any that ever rode at Hastings with the bastard Conqueror, or at Bannockburn; and thus, on reflection, his heart recoiled from making any advances to his old love—to the girl that had been torn from him, unless he obtained that which he considered hopeless—the permission of her father.
In India, why was it, when so many perished of jungle-fever and other pests, that he escaped with scarcely the illness of a day?—when among Nagas, Bhotanese, and Thibetians, matchlock balls and poisoned arrows whistled past him, and keen-edged swords crossed his, no missile or weapon had found a passage to his heart?
Amid these stirring scenes and episodes he had striven to forget everything—more than all, those days of his Guards' life in England; and now—now a lovely face—'only the face of a woman—only a woman's face, nothing more,' as the song has it, and a woman's voice, with all its subtle music, had summoned again all the half-buried memories of the past!
From day-dreams, tormenting thoughts, and weary speculative fancies, which were in some respects alien to his natural temperament, Chute was roused by his valet, Tom Travers, presenting him with a note on the inevitable silver salver.
If, as we have related, he was startled before by seeing an envelope with the Collingwood crest thereon still more was he startled now on receiving another addressed in the well-remembered handwriting of Clare! How long, long it seemed since last he had looked upon it!
While his heart and hands trembled with surprise, he opened Clare's note, which stated briefly that she had heard from Mr. Vane of their intention of going abroad, and begged that he would not forget his promise of once more visiting Ida, by whose request she now wrote.
'The pallor of her complexion and the lowness of her spirits alarm me greatly,' continued Clare. 'I can but hope that when the season is over, and we go to Carnaby Court, the quietness there and the pleasant shady groves in autumn may restore her to health; only papa always likes to have the house full of lively friends from town, as you know of old.'
'Did her hand tremble when she referred to the past?' thought Chute, viciously. 'Was Desmond hanging over her chair when she penned this? Why does she and not Ida write to me? Is this angling or coquetry? But Clare needs not to angle with me, and she never was a coquette.'
The truth was that poor Clare had written, but with the greatest reluctance, by desire of Ida, who, for secret and kind reasons of her own, wished her sister to address him; and the sight of her handwriting did not fail to produce much of the effect which the gentle Ida intended; for Chute, while resolving to pay a visit, meant it to be a farewell one; and if he saw Clare, to suppress all emotion, to seem 'as cool as a cucumber.'
And yet, but for his promise given, and in accordance with Jack Beverley's dying request, he would, on visiting London, no more have gone near the Collingwood family than have faced a volcano in full flame; perhaps he would not have come to London at all till the season was over; and now he was preparing to pay a second visit, but as he meant, a farewell one, to Ida, after dining—actually dining, per express invitation—with the father, who, in a spirit of selfish policy, had broken his engagement with Clare.
It was an absurdly anomalous situation, and altogether strange.
With all Trevor Chute's regard for Jerry Vane, many of his deepest sympathies were with his brave comrade, Beverley, whose last moments he had soothed, and to whose last faint mutterings he had listened when life ebbed in that hot and distant bungalow—mutterings of his past years and absent love—of the beechen woods of his English home.
Chute had a brotherly love for Ida, and had she not asked him to loveheras a sister?
He could remember a dainty, delicate little girl, with a rose-leaf complexion, a face of smiles and dimples, all gay with white lace and blue ribbon, and the floating masses of her auburn hair bound by a simple fillet of gold.
And the memory of these past times, with all their dear and deep associations, came strongly back to Trevor's heart when, within a short time of the receipt of Clare's note, he sat with Ida's thin white hand in his, gazing into the depths of her tender brown eyes, on her pale and delicate cheek, and confessing to himself how lovely she was, and how charming as a friend.
She was every way more calm and composed than when he visited her before, and she seemed much inclined to talk of their first intercourse and relations in the years that were gone; and more than once she stirred the depths of Trevor's honest heart by a few words, dropped as if casually, yet so delicately, from which he was led to infer that he had frequently formed the topic of conversation between her and Clare, and that he was not without an interest in the breast of the latter still.
After a pause he sighed, but with some little bitterness, as he thought of the formidable rival who had Sir Carnaby's 'warmest wishes,' and said:
'Am I, then, to suppose that you have pleaded for me with Clare?'
'Yes, dear Trevor,' she replied, as her slender fingers tightened upon his.
'There was a time when I did not require even you, Ida, to do so for me,' he replied, mistaking, perhaps, her meaning, for he was oversensitive. 'That is all past and gone now; but in the same kind spirit may I not plead with you for one who was very dear to you once—poor Jerry Vane?'
She coloured deeply, and then grew very pale again, and while the long lashes of her soft eyes dropped, she said:
'Do not speak of this again, Trevor—my heart is in Beverley's grave.'
'Yet,' he urged gently, 'a time may come——'
'It will never come.'
'Poor Jerry—as he loved you once, he loves you still. I hope, dear Ida, you pardon me for speaking of this to you.'
'I do from my heart, Trevor; but tell me, in the time that you have seen me—I mean since your return—have you not been struck by a certain strangeness of action about me?'
'I confess that I have.'
'I am conscious of it repeatedly,' she continued with a strange and sad smile.
'In the midst of an animated conversation, I have all at once perceived your thoughts to wander, an expression of alarm to creep over your face, a kind of shudder through your frame, and your hand to tremble.'
'It is so.'
'And this sudden emotion, Ida?
'Comes when I think of Beverley—or, rather, this emotion, which I can neither avert nor control, makesmethink ofhimeven when my thoughts have been elsewhere.'
'This is very strange,' said Trevor Chute, as some of what he deemed Beverley's 'wild speeches' came back to memory again.
'Strange indeed, Trevor; but morbid thoughts come over me, with thethrillyou have remarked, even in the sunshine and when with others, but more especially when I am alone; and there seems to be—oh, Trevor Chute, I know not how to phrase it, lest you think me absurd or eccentric,' she continued, while a wild, sad earnestness stole into her eyes, 'that there hovers near me, and unknown to all, a spirit—a something that is unseen and intangible.'
'This is but overheated fancy,' said Chute tenderly, and with commiseration; 'you should be alone as seldom as possible, and change of air and scene will cure you of all this gloom. On my return—if I should return to London—I shall hope to hear that you are, as you used to be, the bright and happy Ida of my own brighter and happier days.'
And rising now, he lingered with Ida's hand in his, intent on departure, as his last orders to his valet had been to pack at once for France or Germany; and Tom Travers, a faithful fellow, whose discharge he had bought from the Guards, and who had been with him in India and everywhere else, was fully engaged on that duty by this time.
'But, dear Ida,' he said, 'dismiss as soon as you can these gloomy ideas from your mind, and cease to imagine that anything so unnatural, so repugnant to the fixed laws of nature, as aught hovering near youunseen, forcing you to think of Beverley, could exist.'
'I do not require to be forced to think of Beverley,' said she, with tender sadness.
'Pardon me, I did not mean that,' said he.
'I know; but that which seems to haunt me at times may exist; the world is full of mystery, and so is all nature. We know not how even a seed takes root, or a blade of grass springs from the earth.'
'Ida, this is the cant of the spiritualists!' urged Trevor Chute; 'do not adopt it. What would Sir Carnaby think of such a theme?'
She slightly shrugged her shoulders, and with a little laugh said:
'Papa's views of life are very different from mine, and his ideas of the superiority of mind over matter must be vague, if, indeed, he has any views on the subject at all. Do you go to the Continent alone?'
'No, Jerry Vane proposes to accompany me.'
'Also leaving London in the height of the season!'
'His reasons are nearly the same as mine,' replied Chute. 'Have you any message to him?'
'None,' said she, colouring and looking down.
'None,' repeated Chute, in a half-reproachful tone.
'Save my kindest wishes. You know, Trevor, that I used Jerry very ill; I am well aware of that, but it is too late now to—to——' She paused in confusion, and then said, 'Poor Jerry, I pity him with unspeakable pity.'
'I would that he heard you,' said Chute, caressing her pretty hand.
'Why?'
'Does not Dryden tell us that pity melts the mind to love?'
'Do not repeat the admission I have made,' said Ida, as a shade of annoyance crossed her pallid face, adding firmly, 'Let him have no false hopes; my heart has a great tenderness, but no such love as he wishes, for him.'
'And now farewell, Ida, for a long time.'
'A pleasant journey to you,' said she, and tears started to her eyes, as he bowed himself out of her boudoir.
'Thanks—to-night may see me in Paris.'
'In Paris to-night?' said a voice that thrilled him, and he found himself face to face with Clare, who unexpectedly, and somewhat to her own confusion, appeared at the drawing-room door.
'I knew not that you were at home,' replied Chute, with some coldness of manner, as the memories of last night occurred to him, and he too became confused as he added, 'I meant to have left a farewell card for Sir Carnaby.'
Mechanically they entered the drawing-room. For reasons of her own, Ida did not follow them, and feeling full of the awkwardness of the situation, Trevor Chute lingered, hat in hand, and Clare, amid the tremor and tumult of her thoughts, forgot to offer him a seat.
She was provoked now that she had yielded to Ida's urgency, and written personally to Chute.
Yet wherefore, or why? She had loved him in the past time, and loved him still, as she whispered in her heart; and felt sure that he loved her; and yet—and yet she thought now that letter should have been written by Ida, not her, if written at all.
'I hope you enjoyed your evening with papa at the club,' she said; with polite frigidity of manner.
'Far from it,' said he abruptly, as he felt piqued thereby.
'Indeed!'
'I can scarcely tell you why.'
'Do, if possible,' said she, with genuine surprise.
'Pardon the admission, Miss Collingwood, but all night long Sir Carnaby sang the praises of a certain Major Desmond.'
Clare coloured deeply; her eyes darkened, and sparkled, yet softly, under the sweep of their long black lashes.
'It was horrible taste in papa—toyouespecially! How could he act so strangely?'
'So cruelly, Clare,' said Trevor Chute, with a burst of honest emotion, born of the sudden line this conversation had taken.
'Fear not for Desmond,' said she, in a bitter, yet low tone, as she shook her graceful head.
'He was to—to propose for your hand.'
'He did so this morning,' was the calm reply.
'And you, Miss Collingwood, you——'
'Refused him.'
'Oh, Clare!' exclaimed Trevor, and all the old love beamed in his eyes as he uttered her name.
'Neither doubt nor misunderstand me,' said Clare, very calmly, and in a voice that was earnest, sweet, and low. 'Papa and others too' ('What others?' thought Chute) 'have tried hard to make me forget what you and I were to each other once, but he and they have failed.'
'Thank God!' exclaimed Chute, so full of emotion that he clutched the back of a chair for support.
'In the seeming emptiness of my heart,' said Clare, speaking in a low tone and with downcast eyes, while the throbbing of her bosom was apparent beneath her dress, 'I made for myself a life within a life, known to myself alone.'
'And that life, darling?'
'Was full ofyou.'
He made a step towards her; but she drew back, and said, questioningly:
'And you, Trevor, in the days of this long separation?'
'Have never, never forgotten you, Clare!'
'Yet you must have seen many!'
'Many—yes, and lovely women, too; but never have I felt a touch of even the slightest passing pang or preference for any one out of the many.'
Clare gazed at him softly and sweetly. She did not, she could not, tell him that in the intervals of a brilliant garden party she had rejected for the third time the passionate supplications and proposals of one who could have made her a marchioness; and those who knew of this thought her cold and proud, but they were wrong, for Clare was 'one of those women who, beneath the courtly negligence of a chill manner, are capable of infinite tenderness, infinite nobility, and infinite self-reproach,' and her heart was loving, tender, sweet, and warm as a summer rose to those who knew her, and whom she loved.
The mist was dispelling fast now.
Again they were discovering, or recalling, all that was sympathetic in each other, and learning to understand each other by word, and hint, or glance, when soul seemed to speak to soul, and more than all, when hand met hand, did Clare feel that which she had never felt since their separation, how magnetic was the influence between them, and how no other hand had made the blood course through her veins as his had done.
The situation was becoming perilous, and Sir Carnaby might at any moment come upon them, like the ogre of a fairy tale, or the irate father of a melodrama.
'I must go, Clare,' said he, but yet he lingered.
Again he was calling her by her name—her Christian name—as of old, in the dear past time, and how sweetly it sounded in her ear!
'Trevor,' said she, pressing a hand on her heart as if to soothe its throbbing, while she leant on a table with the other, 'stay yet a moment.'
Clare was with him again; he was conscious of nothing more; and the old love that had never passed out of his heart, or hers either, stronger now than it had ever been, made him linger in her presence, and made eye dwell on eye, tenderly, sadly, and passionately, till emotion got the better of all prudence, pride, and policy, and snatching the hand that was pressed upon her bosom, he besought her, in what terms, or with what words, he scarcely knew in the whirl of his thoughts, to be his wife at all risks and hazards.
But Clare drew her hand away, and mournfully shook her head, and then, with an effort, spoke calmly—
'You know, Trevor, how I loved poor mamma, and how she loved me?'
'I do, my own Clare.'
'Well, on her death-bed she made me give her two solemn promises.'
'And these were?'
'First, to be, so far as I could, a mother to Ida and Violet, and—and——'
'The second? Oh, Clare, keep me not in suspense!'
'Never to marry without the fullest consent of papa; and as he acted before, so will he act again, out of mere petulance and pride, perhaps, as he will never acknowledge himself in error. Oh, Trevor!' she added, pathetically, 'I would that we had never met, and almost wish that after being so cruelly parted we had never met more.'
Trevor Chute was silent for a time, but a sense of irritation against her father gave him courage to hope.
'Clare, Sir Carnaby is a somewhat gay man,' said he, 'and he has hinted to Jerry Vane, to Colonel Rakes, and others, the chance——'
'Of what?' asked Clare, as her lips became pale.
'Pardon me—his marrying again.'
'With whom?'
'I heard no name.'
'Marrying again!' she exclaimed, with anger, as certain undefined suspicions occurred to her or came to memory. 'If Sir Carnaby does aught so absurd, I shall consider myself absolved from my promise to await his permission, and—and——'
'What, dearest Clare?'
'Become that which I should have been three long years ago,' she replied, with tenderness and vehemence.
'My wife, darling?'
'Your wife, Trevor.'
'Oh, Clare, God bless you for these words!'
And as his arms went round her, all the man's brave heart went out to her, and tears started to his eyes as he kissed her with a passionate warmth in which he had never indulged in the past days of their early and unclouded love.
Soft Clare in his arms again! Clare's tender lips touching his! Oh, which was a dream and which was the truth? The three years of excitement, sorrow, and disappointment in burning India; the marches under the fierce glaring sun; long days of drought and thirst, when facing death among the fierce hill tribes; nights, chill and bitter, among the Himalayan snows; the hard existence in barrack, tent, and bungalow, all so different from what his Guards life had been in London—the present or the past!
But to what would the present lead?
They knew too well that, so far as Sir Carnaby was concerned, his consent would never be given.
'Heavens, Clare!' exclaimed Trevor, in this bitter conviction, 'to what a death in life does your father doom you!'
'Sayus, Trevor,' said she, in a choking voice.
'Bless you, dear girl, for saying so; but you it seems, and all for my sake!'
At last he had to retire—literally to tear himself away.
So there was acted and there was ended, for the time, their bitter but sorrowful romance, in that most prosaic of all places a fashionable drawing-room, with all its mirrors, lounges, porcelains, andobjets d'art, which seem so necessary to that apartment which Button Cook calls essentially 'the British drawing-room,' and mentally over and over again did Trevor Chute react and recall every detail of that delicious, yet painful interview, which had come so unexpectedly about, while the swift tidal train bore him from Charing Cross; and her last words seemed to linger yet in his ear—her face before his eye, like the vision of a waking dream—as on the deck of the steam-packet he sat, apart from all, full of his own thoughts, and saw the lights of Harwich and Landguard Fort mingling with moonshine on the water, while the clang of the Bell Buoy came on the wind, and the Shipwash floating beacon was soon left astern, and Trevor Chute, careless of whither he went, changed his mind and resolved to go to Germany.
Happy thoughts banished sleep from his eyes, and on deck he stayed nearly the whole night through, till the muddy waters of the Maese were rippling against the bow of the Dutch steamer.
Clare loved him still, as she had ever, ever done! New happiness grew with hope in his heart.
Yet the prospect was a hard one. He could only know that, though not his wife, Clare Collingwood should never be the wife of another, and tenderly he looked on a ring of sapphires and opals from her hand, on which he had slipped their old engagement ring of diamonds.
He was alone, we have said, for his friend Vane did not accompany him.
He had a card for Lady Rakes' 'at home;' Clare was going, and Ida too; so the former asked Trevor to get him to defer his journey and be present, adding:
'It is for Ida's sake; you knowallI mean, and all I hope she wishes.'
'I do, Clare, and so will Jerry.'
'But do not speak of her.'
Hence Vane remained behind in London.
Clare was seated in a shady corner of the library, looking alternately at the German map in Murray's Guide and the diamond ring which she had first received from Trevor Chute on the eventful moonlight night at Carnaby Court.
How strange that it should be on her finger again after all!
'And to think,' she muttered, 'that papa should so unkindly and, with bad taste have stung his tender and loving heart by speaking tohimof me and that big butterfly soldier, Desmond! No wonder it is that Trevor seemed cold, constrained, and strange. Oh, my love, what must you have thought of me!'
And the girl, as she uttered this aloud, pressed the ring to her lips, while her eyes filled with tears. Then she sank into one of her reveries, from which, after a time, she was roused by the entrance of her father. He was attired for a ride in the Row, had his whip in his hand, and was buttoning his faultlessly fitting gloves on his thin white aristocratic hands with the care that he usually exhibited; but Clare could perceive that his face wore an undoubtedly cloudy expression.
'Papa, for whom were those lovely jewels that came here for inspection yesterday?' she asked.
'Not for you, Miss Collingwood.'
'Yet they were sent here.'
'A mistake of the shop-people.'
Clare looked up with surprise in her sweet face, for his manner, though studiously polite in tone, was curt and strange.
'Perhaps they were for Ida?' said Clare, gently.
'No.'—'Violet, then?'
'No.'—'For whom, then, papa?'
'The sister of him you rejected yesterday.'
'Evelyn Desmond!'
'Yes, Miss Collingwood; and thereby hangs a tale,' replied Sir Carnaby, giving a final touch to his stock in a mirror opposite. 'Did any silly fancy for this man who has just returned to India—this Captain Chute—influence you in this matter?'
Clare coloured painfully, but said 'No.'
'Glad to hear it, Clare, as I thought all that stuff was forgotten long ago,' he continued, with the nearest approach to a frown that was ever seen on his usually impassible visage.
'You asked him to dine at your club, papa,' said Clare, evasively.
'Yes, out of mere politeness, to thank him, as Beverley's friend, for visiting Ida, though I fear the visit may make her grief a greater bore than ever. But why did you decline an alliance that would be so advantageous as that with Desmond?'
'Simply because I cannot love him, and I don't wish to leave you, dearest papa; now that you are getting old.'
'Old!' He was frowning in earnest now.
'Pardon me, papa, I love no man sufficiently to make me leave your roof for his.'
'What stuff and nonsense is this, Clare Collingwood!'
'It is neither, but truth, papa.'
'Though you have the bad taste to inform me that I am getting old, permit me to remind you that in many things you, Clare, are a mere child, though a woman in years.'
'A child, perhaps, compared with such women as Desmond's sister Evelyn,' replied Clare, with some annoyance.
'And as a woman in years, I, foreseeing the time when I could not have you always to reign over my table at Carnaby Court or in Piccadilly, have deemed it necessary to provide myself with a—a——'
'Papa!'
'Well, a substitute,' he added, giving a finishing adjust to his gloves, and then looking Clare steadily in the face.
'In the person of Evelyn Desmond!' she exclaimed, in a breathless voice, and becoming very pale.
'Precisely, my dear Miss Collingwood. She has promised to fill up in my heart all the fearful void left there by the loss of your good mother. I meant to have told you this long ago, but—but it was an awkward subject to approach.'
'So I should think!'
'With one who comports herself like you; and—ah—in fact, now that we are about it, I may mention that the marriage has been postponed only in consequence of Beverley's death, Ida's mourning, illness, and all that sort of thing.'
'So my sacrifice in declining poor Trevor Chute, after all his faith, love, and cruel treatment, was uncalled for,' thought Clare, as she stood like a marble statue, with scorn growing on her lovely lip, while endeavouring to realize the startling tidings now given to her.
'Isthisto be the end of Evelyn's endless manoeuvring and countless flirtations?' she exclaimed after a pause.
'Miss Collingwood, I spoke of Miss Desmond,' said he.
'So did I,' replied Clare, with growing anger.
'Don't be so impulsive—rude, I should say—it is bad form, bad style, very.'
'Poor mamma!' sighed Clare; 'she was a good and true gentlewoman.'
'That I grant you, but a trifle cold and stately.'
'When she died I thought it is only when angels leave us that we see the light of heaven on their wings.'
'Now don't be melodramatic; it is absurd, and to be emotional is bad taste. As one cuckoo does not make a spring any more than one swallow a summer, so no more should one affair of the human heart make up the end of a human existence.'
'Are you really in earnest about this, papa?'
'Of course, though I am not much in earnest about anything usually; it is not worth one's while.'
'At a certain age, perhaps,' thought Clare; 'but you were earnest enough once, in dismissing poor Trevor Chute.'
'You will break this matter to your sisters,' said he, preparing to leave her.
'My sisters!' said Clare, bitterly and sadly. 'Oh, papa! think of Violet's prospects with—with' (she feared to add such a chaperon)—'and of Ida, so sad, so delicate in health.'
'Nonsense, Miss Collingwood, Ida will soon marry again; such absurd grief never lasts; and I am sure that Vane loves her still.'
'Thenheis not supposed to have got over "that stuff," as you think Trevor Chute and I have done.'
'Miss Collingwood, I do not like my words repeated; so with your permission we shall cease the subject, and I shall bid you good-morning.'
Whenever he was offended with any of his own family the tone he adopted was one of elaborate politeness; and twiddling his eyeglass, with a kind of Dundreary skip, this model father, this 'awful dad' of Clare, departed to the abode of his inamorata.
Clare remained for some time standing where he had left her as if turned to stone. The proud and sensitive girl's cheek burned with mingled shame and anger as she thought of the ridicule, the perhaps coarse gibes of the clubs, and general irony of society, which such an alliance was apt to excite; and with all the usual command of every emotion peculiar to her set and style, as this conviction came upon her, tears hot and swift rushed into her sweet dark eyes.
Could Sir Carnaby have been so insane as to contemplate a double alliance with that fast family? she asked of herself.
'It would have made us all more than ever ridiculous!' she muttered aloud; and then she thought with more pleasure of her re-engagement with Trevor Chute, the promise given, and which she would certainly redeem; yet she fairly wept for the price of its redemption, as she shrank with a species of horror from seeing that 'Parky party,' as she knew the men about town called the fair Evelyn, occupying the place of her dead mother at home and abroad, and presented at Court and elsewhere in the Collingwood jewels.
Vanity, perhaps, as much as anything else, was the cause of this new idea in the mind of the shallow Sir Carnaby. Though he felt perfectly conscious that his own day was past, he would not acknowledge it. He knew well, too, that though many enjoyed his dinners and wines, his crushes in Piccadilly, and his cover-shooting at Carnaby Court, and that many tolerated him for the sake of his rank, position, and charming daughters, they deemed him 'no end of an old bore,' and this conviction galled and cut him to the quick.
Hence, if Evelyn Desmond became his wife, the fact would be a kind of protest againstTimeitself!
'How society will laugh! it is intolerable!' exclaimed Ida, thoroughly rousing herself when she heard the startling tidings. 'You, Clare, were ever his favourite—the one who, as he said always, reminded him most of poor mamma 'when she last folded her pale, thin hands so meekly, and after kissing us all, gave up her soul to God; yet he could tell you, in this jaunty way, that another was to take her place, and that other was such a woman as Evelyn Desmond!'
Already the rumour of 'the coming event' must, they thought, be known in town, else wherefore the hint thrown out so vaguely by Trevor Chute? Already! The mortification of the girls was unspeakable.
Had the unwelcome announcement been made to her but a day sooner, at least before her chance interview with Trevor—that interview so full of deep and tender interest to them both—she might have been tempted to make a promise more distinct than she had given, for Clare's gentle heart was full of indignation now.
Trevor Chute could not now make, as in the past time, such settlements as her father's ambition required and deemed necessary; yet his means were ample, and she had lands, riches, and position enough for both; so why should she not be his wife?