The smile of pleasure, of amusement, even of innocent vanity with which in this airy stage a young man contemplates such a possibility, threw a pleasant light over his face. He went out with that smile half hidden under his fair moustache, which gave it a kind of confidential character between him and himself so to speak. As he had nothing else to do, it occurred to him to take a walk on the road to Dunearn, where he had seen the French-Scotchtourellesof Lindores Castle through the trees the day before, and "take a look at" the place—why, he did not know—for no particular reason, merely to amuse himself. And as he went down the avenue, that old episode came back to him more and more fully. He remembered all the little expeditions, the little misadventures, the jokes, though perhaps they were not brilliant. Carry lingering behind with Beaufort, talking Shelley, with a flush of enthusiasm about her: Edith always foremost, chidden and petted, and made much of by everybody, with her long hair waving, and those fine little shoes which he had tied once—thick mountain shoes—but such wonderful Cinderella articles! All these recollections amused him like a story as he went down the avenue, taking away his attention from external things; and it was not till he was close upon the gate that he was aware of the presence of two ladies, who seemed to have paused on their walk to speak to Peggy Burnet, the gardener's wife, who inhabited the lodge. His ear was caught by his own name, always an infallible means of rousing the most careless attention. He could not help hearing what Peggy was saying, for her voice was somewhat high-pitched, and full of rural freedom. "Oh ay, my leddy; the young maister, that's Mr John, that's the laird, came hame yestreen," Peggy was saying, "before he was expectit. The carriage—that's the bit dogcart, if you can ca' it a carriage, for there's nothing better left, nor so much as a beast to draw it that we can ca' oor ain—was sent to the station to meet him. When, lo! he comes linking along the road on his ain twa legs, and no so much as a bag or a portmanty behind him, and asks at the gate, Is this Dalrulzian? kenning nothing of his ain house! And me, I hadna the sense to think, This is him; but just let him in as if he had been a stranger. And no a creature to take the least notice! Mr Rolls was just out o' himsel, with vexation, to let the young maister come hame as if he had been ony gangrel body; but it couldna be called my fault."
"Surely it could not be your fault; if he wanted a reception, he should have come when he was expected," said a softer voice, with a little sound of laughter. Surely, John thought, he had heard that voice before. He hurried forward wondering, taking off his hat instinctively. Who were they? Two ladies, one elder, one younger, mother and daughter. They looked up at him as he approached. The faces were familiar, and yet not familiar. Was it possible? He felt himself redden with excitement as he stood breathless, his hat off, the blood flushing to the very roots of his hair, not able to get out a word in his surprise and pleasure. They on their side looked at him smilingly, not at all surprised, and the elder lady held out her hand. "After so long a time you will scarcely know us, Mr Erskine," she said; "but we knew you were expected, and all about you, you see."
"Know you?" cried John, almost speechless with the wonder and delight. "Mrs Lindores! The thing is, can I venture to believe my eyes? There never was such luck in the world! I think I must be dreaming. Who would have expected to meet you here, and the very first day?"
Peggy Burnet was much disturbed by this greeting. She pushed forward, making an anxious face at him. "Sir! sir! you maun say my leddy," she breathed, in a shrill whisper, which he was too much excited to take any notice of, but which amused the ladies. They cast a laughing look at each other. "Didn't you know we were here?" the mother said. "Then we had the advantage of you. We have been speculating about you for weeks past—whether you would be much changed, whether you would come at once to Lindores to renew old acquaintance——"
"That you may be sure I should have done," said John, "as soon as I knew you were there. And are you really at Lindores? living there? for good? It seems too delightful to be true."
They were both changed. And he did not know why they should look at each other with such a laughing interchange of glances. It made him somewhat uncomfortable, though his mind was too full of the pleasure of seeing them to be fully conscious of it. It was Edith, as was natural, who was most altered in appearance. She had been a tall girl, looking more than her age; and now she was a small, very young woman. At that period of life such changes happen sometimes; but the difference was delightful, though embarrassing. Yes, smaller, she was actually smaller, he said to himself,—"as high as my heart," as Orlando says: yet no longer little Edith, but an imposing stately personage at whom he scarcely ventured to look boldly, but only snatched shy glances at, abashed by her soft regard. He went on stammering out his pleasure, his delight, his surprise, hardly knowing what he said. "I had just begun to hope that you might come sometimes, that I might have a chance of seeing you," he was saying; whereupon Edith smiled gravely, and her mother gave a little laugh aloud.
"I don't believe he knows anything about it, Edith," she said.
"I was sure of it, mamma," Edith replied; while between them John stood dumb, not knowing what to think.
The explanation which was given to John Erskine on the highroad between Dalrulzian and Lindores, as it is still more important to us than to him, must be here set forth at more length. There are some happy writers whose mission it is to expound the manners and customs of the great. To them it is given to know how duchesses and countesses demean themselves in theirmoments perdus, and they even catch as it flies that airy grace with which the chit-chat of society makes itself look like something of consequence. Gildedsalonsin Belgravia, dainty boudoirs in Mayfair, not to speak of everything that is gorgeous in the rural palaces, which are as so many centres of light throughout England—are the scenery in which they are accustomed to enshrine the subjects of their fancy. And yet, alas! to these writers when they have done all, yet must we add that they fail to satisfy their models. When the elegant foreigner, or what is perhaps more consonant with the tastes of the day, the refined American, ventures to form his opinion of the habits of society from its novels, he is always met with an amused or indignant protestation. As if these sort of people knew anything about society! Lady Adeliza says. It is perhaps as well, under these circumstances, to assume a humility, even if we have it not; and indeed the present writer has always been shy of venturing into exalted regions, or laying profane hands upon persons of quality. But when a family of rank comes in our way by necessity, it would be cowardice to recoil from the difficulties of the portraiture. Should we fail to represent in black and white the native grace, the air noble, the exalted sentiments which belong by right to members of the aristocracy, the reader will charitably impute the blame rather to the impression made upon our nerves by a superiority so dazzling than to any defect of goodwill. Besides, in the present case, which is a great aid to modesty, the family had been suddenly elevated, and were not born in the purple. Lady Lindores was a commoner by birth, and not of any very exalted lineage—a woman quite within the range of ordinary rules and instincts; and even Lady Edith had been Miss Edith till within a few years. Their honours were still new upon them: they were not themselves much used to these honours any more than their humble chronicler; with which preface we enter with diffidence upon the recent history of the noble house of Lindores.
The late earl had been a man unfortunate in his children. His sons by his first marriage had died one after another, inheriting their mother's delicate health. His second wife had brought him but one son, a likely and healthy boy; but an accident, one of those simplest risks which hundreds are subject to, and escape daily, carried this precious boy off in a moment. His father, who had been entirely devoted to him, died afterwards of a broken heart, people said. The next brother, who was in India with his regiment, died there almost at the same time, and never knew that he had succeeded to the family honours. And thus it was that the Honourable Robert Lindores, a poor gentleman, living on a very straitened income, in a cheap French town, with his wife and daughters, and as little expecting any such elevation as a poor curate expects to be made Archbishop of Canterbury, became Earl of Lindores and the head of the family, without warning or preparation. It does not perhaps require very much preparation to come to such advancement; and the new earl was to the manner born. But Mrs Lindores, who was a woman full of imagination, with nerves and ideas of her own, received a considerable shock. She had no objection to being a countess; the coronet, indeed, was pleasant to her as it is to most people. She liked to look at it on her handkerchiefs: there is no such pretty ornament. But it startled her mind and shook her nerves just at first. And it made a great, a very great, change in the family life. Instead of strolling about as they had done for years, with one maid for the mother and daughters, and a shabby cheap French servant, who was valet and factotum; going to all kinds of places; living as they liked; and though, with many a complaint, getting a great deal of pleasure out of their lives: there was an immediate shaking of themselves together—a calling in of stray habits and fancies,—a jump into their new place, as of an inexperienced and half-alarmed rider, not at all sure how he was to get on with his unaccustomed steed. This at least was the mood of Lady Lindores. The Earl knew all about it better than she did. Even to be merely the "honourable" had fluttered her senses a little; and it had never occurred to her that anything further was possible. The family was poor—still poor, even when thus elevated as it were to the throne; but the poverty of the Honourable Robert was very different from that of the right honourable Earl. In the one case it was actual poverty, in the other only comparative. To be sure it was, when one had time to think, distressing and troubling not to have money enough to refurnish the Castle (the taste of the late lord had been execrable) and make many improvements which were quite necessary. But that was very different from not having money enough to possess a settled home of your own anywhere, which had been their previous condition. The Earl took his measures without a moment's delay. He dismissed the servants who had followed them in their poverty, and engaged others in London, who were more proper to the service of a noble family. They travelled quite humbly, indeed, in their old half-Bohemian way, until they reached London, and then all at once cast their slough. The ladies put on their clothes, which they had stopped to procure in Paris, and suddenly blossomed out (though in deep mourning) into the likeness of their rank. It was a thing to make the steadiest heart beat. Young Robin was at Chatham, a lieutenant in a marching regiment—a young nobody, pleased to be noticed even by the townsfolk; and lo! in a moment, this insignificant lieutenant became Lord Rintoul. It was like a transformation scene; he came to meet his people when they passed through London, and they could scarcely speak to each other when they met in their mutual wonder. "Poor little Rintoul, all the same, poor little beggar!" Robin Lindores said. To think of the poor boy, cut off in a moment, whose death had purchased them all these honours, affected the young people with a strange awe, and almost remorseful pain. They felt as if somehow, without knowing it, they had been the cause of that terrible sudden removal of all the hopes that had rested on their little cousin's head. Lady Lindores herself declared that she dared not think of her predecessor, the mother of that poor boy, "the dowager," alas! poor lady. The dowager was younger than her successor in the family honours, having been a second wife. They were all silent with respectful awe when her name was mentioned; but the Earl said pshaw! and thought this superfluous. He was more used to it; he had been born in the purple, and now that he had come, though unexpectedly, to his kingdom, he knew how to fill that exalted place.
The Earl was a man of a character which never, up to this time, had been estimated as it deserved. He had been quite an easy-going sort of person in his former estate. In his youth he was said to have been extravagant. Since his marriage—which had been an imprudent marriage, in so far that he might perhaps have got a richer wife had he tried, but which was wise so far that the income upon which they lived chiefly came from that wife—he had let himself go quietly enough upon the current, there being no motive to struggle against it. The very best that they could make of it was simply to "get along;" and get along they did without putting any force upon their inclinations. He was always able to secure his comforts, such as were indispensable; and as he liked the easier routine of a wandering life, he did not object, as he said, to make a sacrifice for the education of his children and their amusement, by living in places where the pleasures were cheap and there was no dignity to keep up. He had in this sense been very complying, both as a husband and a father, and had allowed himself to be guided, as his family thought, by their wishes quite as much, at least, as by his own. He had not in these days been in the least a severe father, or shown marks of a worldly mind. What was the use? The girls were too young as yet to have become valuable instruments of ambition, and he had not learnt to think of them as anything but children. But when this extraordinary change came in their existence, the easydilettante—whose wants were limited to a few graceful knick-knacks, an elegant little meal, good music, when procurable, and a life undisturbed by vulgar cares—altered his very nature, as his family thought. Hitherto his wife and his girls had done everything for him, aided by the ubiquitous, the handy, the all-accomplished Jean or François, who was half-a-dozen men in one—cook, valet, footman, pattern man-of-all-work. They arranged the rooms in every new place they went to, so that the fact that these rooms were those of a hotel or lodging-house should be masked by familiar prettinesses, carried about with them. They gave a careful supervision to his meals, and arranged everything, so that papa should get the best out of his limited existence, and none of its troubles. And as there was nothing against Mr Lindores—no bad repute, but with an honourable at his name—every English club, everycercle, was open to him. He always dressed carefully; now and then he helped a wealthier friend to a bargain in the way of art. He saw a great deal of society. On the whole, perhaps, for a man without ambition, and upon whom neither the fate of his children nor the use of his own life pressed very heavily, he got as much satisfaction out of his existence as most men; and so might have lived and died, no man knowing what was really in him, had not poor young Rintoul broken his neck over that fence, and drawn his father with him into the grave. From the moment when the letter, placed calmly by Mr Lindores's plate at breakfast, as though it meant nothing particular, had its black seals broken, he was another man. How distinctly they all recollected that scene!—a lofty French room, with bare white walls and long large windows, the green Persians closed to keep out the sunshine, one long line of light falling across the polished floor, where one of these shutters had got unfastened; the spacious coolness in the midst of heat, which is characteristic of such houses, like the atmosphere in M. Alma Tadema's pictures; the white-covered table with its flowers and pretty arrangements; the girls in their white cool dresses; and François lifting the small silver cover from his master's favourite dish. All the composure and quiet of this interior had been broken in a moment. There had been a sudden stifled cry, and Mr Lindores, pushing the table from him, disordering the dishes, over-setting his heavy chair as he sprang to his feet, had finished reading his letter standing upright, trembling with excitement, his face flushed and crimson. "What is it?" they had all cried. "Robin?" Naturally, the son who was away was the first thought of the women. For a minute the father had made no reply, and their anxiety was beyond words. Then he put down the letter solemnly, and went to his wife and took her hand. "There is nothing wrong with Robin," he said; "but it comes by trouble to others, if not to us. My dear, you are the Countess of Lindores." It was some minutes before the real meaning of this communication penetrated their astonished minds; and the first proof of understanding which the new Lady Lindores gave was to cover her face and cry out, "Oh, poor boy! oh, poor Jane, poor Jane!" with a pang at her heart. It was not all grief for the other—could any one expect that?—but the poignant state of emotion which this strange terrible good fortune caused her, had a sharpness of anguish in it for the moment. The girls went away hushed and silenced, unable to eat their breakfasts, to find some black ribbons instead of the bright ones they wore. They wept a few tears as they went to their rooms over poor young Rintoul; but they had known very little of the boy, and the strange excitement of the change soon crept into their veins. Lady Caroline and Lady Edith! instead of the humble Miss Lindores. No wonder that it went to their heads.
And from that moment the new Earl was a different man. He threw off all his languor, took everything into his own hands. Those little economies which it had been so necessary to insist upon yesterday were now absurd, notwithstanding that the Earls of Lindores were far from rich—comparatively. The family came home rapidly, as has been said; pausing in Paris to get their dresses, to dismiss the faithful servants of their poverty, who would be of no use, the Earl decided, in the change of circumstances. He behaved very well, everybody said, to poor Lady Lindores, his brother's young widow, who had thus been left at once widowed and childless. He showed "every consideration;" would not allow her to be hurried; waited her convenience and her pleasure in every way. But, naturally, that poor lady was glad to take refuge with her own family in her desolation; and within a few months, the wandering exile-family, familiar with all the cheap watering-places and centres of genteel emigration on the Continent, were settled in the greatness of their new position, as if they had never known any less elevated circumstances. There was a great deal of excitement in the change; and though it was sad at first, no doubt there was a pleasure in hearing Robin addressed by the name of Rintoul, and accustoming themselves to their ladyships. But yet, when all was over, it was not perhaps to the girls so great an improvement as it appeared on the old life. They were not dull—oh no—but still there was a great deal less to do and to see than there used to be; and though they felt, as their mother said, that girls with so many resources ought to be occupied and happy wherever they went, still the calm of the Castle was very different from the stir and movement to which they had been used.
Up to this time, however, nothing had happened to them except that which was determined by another will than theirs, the inevitable result of other events. But they had not been long settled in their new and elevated life when it became apparent that other changes had happened which were not evoked by any external fate, and which were yet more profoundly to affect their life. That Swiss holiday had been more important to Carry than any one out of the family knew. It had ended in a kind of vague engagement, only half sanctioned, yet only half opposed by her family, and which it was possible, had Mr Beaufort been rich enough to marry, would not have been opposed at all. Had he possessed income enough or courage enough to make the venture, the result in all likelihood would, years before, have been out of the reach of evil fate; but while it remained only an engagement, Mr Lindores had refused his official sanction to it. And it had seemed to Carry, in whose mind the first conscious thought after the news of this extraordinary change was to communicate it to Edward, that from that very day her father's aspect had changed towards her. He had met her running out to the post with her letter in the afternoon, and had given a suspicious glance at it, and stopped her, telling her it was not fit she should go out on a day so serious. Not a word had been said for weeks and even months after, but she knew very well that things were not as before. All reference to Beaufort was somehow stopped; even her mother managed to arrest upon her lips all mention of her lover. She was herself too timid to open the subject, and gradually a chill certainty that he was to be ignored and pushed aside out of her life, came upon the poor girl. How it was that further dangers dawned upon her, it would be hard to tell; but it is certain that she had divined a something—a tightening coil about her helpless feet, a design upon her freedom and happiness—before the family had been long at Lindores. One of the consequences of their great honour and increased stateliness of living was, that the two sisters were partially separated, as they felt, from each other. They no longer occupied the same room as they had done all their lives. They had now what with their foreign habits they called anappartement—a suite of rooms set apart for them; and as Edith was full of curiosity and excitement about the new life, and Carry was discouraged and depressed, and felt it odious to her, they fell a little apart without any mutual intention or consciousness. It was in the beginning of their first winter, when the dark days were closing in, that this semi-estrangement first became apparent to the younger sister. She awoke all at once to the consciousness that Carry was pale; that she shut herself up very much, and more than ever devoted herself to her writing; that she composed a great many little poems (for she was the genius of the family), and often had a suspicion of redness about her eyes. This discovery was instantaneous. Edith had never been awakened to any but the most simple troubles of life, and it had not occurred to her to imagine that there was anything beneath the headache which her sister so often took refuge in. But her mind, when it began to act, was rapid and keen. It became apparent to her that she had been losing sight of Carry, and that Carry was not happy. The progress from one step to another of her solicitude for her sister was rapid as lightning. She remembered everything in a moment, though these causes of sorrow had been altogether out of her thoughts before. She remembered that not a word had been said of Mr Beaufort for months; that Carry had ceased altogether to speculate as to anything that might happen in the future; that all this was as a closed book between them nowadays. As soon as she arrived at this conviction, Edith found herself ready to interfere for good or evil. She went into the room where Carry was writing her little poetries, with something of the effect of a fresh light wind, carrying refreshment, but also a little disturbance, with her. She stooped over her sister with a caressing arm round her neck, and plunged at once into the heart of the subject. It was a still, dull afternoon of early winter, and nobody was by. "Carry," she said, all at once—"Carry, it is so long since we have said anything to each other! I wanted to ask you about—Edward!" Upon this, for all answer, Carry fell a-crying, but after a while sobbed forth, "I will never give him up!"
"Give him up!" cried Edith, surprised. She had what her mother called a positive nature, much less romantic, much less sensitive, than her sister. The idea of giving up had never entered her mind. "Give him up!—no, of course not. I never thought of such a thing; but I am afraid it will be harder than ever with papa."
"Oh, Edith, it will beimpossible," Caroline said. And then the two sisters looked at each other—the one astonished, indignant, full of resistance; the other pale, drooping, without vigour or hope.
"What does impossible mean?" said the younger, not with any affectation or grandiloquence; for probably she had never heard of any heroic utterance on the subject. "You mean very, very hard. So it will be. I have wanted to speak to you since ever we came here. I want to know what he says himself, and if papa has said anything, and what mamma thinks. We don't seem to live together now," she added, with a clouded countenance. "It's always, 'Oh, Lady Caroline has gone out,' or, 'Her ladyship is in the library with my lord,' It seemed very nice at first, but I begin to hate ladyships and lordships with all my heart."
"So do I," said Caroline, with a sigh.
"If you marry a man without a title, couldn't you give it up? Perhaps one wouldn't like that either, now," said the girl, candidly. "It was far,farnicer, far more natural, in the old days; but perhaps one wouldn't like to go back."
"I suppose not," said Carry, drearily. She was not a beautiful girl, as in her romantic position she ought to have been. Her nose was too large; her complexion deficient; her eyes were grey, sweet, and thoughtful, but not brilliant or shining. Her figure had the willowy grace of youth, but nothing more imposing. She had a very sweet radiant smile when she was happy; this was the chief attraction of her face: but at present she was not happy, and her pale gentle countenance was not one to catch the general eye.
"But I hope you are going to make a stand, Carry," said the energetic little Edith. "You won't, surely—you can't be solâcheas to give in?Iwould not!—not if it cost me my life!"
"Ah, if it was a question of one's life! but no one wants your life," said Carry, shaking her head. "No one will touch us, or lock us up, or any of these old-fashioned things. If they only would! The poets say 'I could die for you,' as if that was difficult! Oh no, it is far harder, far harder to live."
"Carry! you have been thinking a great deal about it, then?"
"What else could I think about? Since the first moment papa looked at me that day—you remember that day?—I knew in a moment what he meant. He gave me just one glance. You know he never said that he would consent."
Edith's youthful countenance gathered a sympathetic cloud. "Papa has been so changed ever since," she said.
"He never would allow that he had consented even before,—and while we were all poor, what did it matter? So long as he does not ask me to——"
"To what?" Edith asked, with a wondering perception of the shudder which ran over her sister's slight figure. "Are you cold, Car?"
"To—marry some one else," cried poor Caroline, with a heavy sigh,—so heavy that it was almost a groan.
Edith sprang to her feet with indignant vehemence. "Thatis not possible; nobody could be so cowardly, so cruel, as that," she said, clasping her hands together. "Carry, you speak as if papa was a bad man; you slander him; it is not true, it is not true!"
"He would not think it cruel," said Caroline, shaking her head sadly. "He would not mean any harm; he would say to himself that it was for my good."
Her despondency quenched the passion and energy of the younger girl. Carry's drooping head and heavy eyes were enough to damp even the liveliest courage. "Are you thinking of—any one in particular?" Edith said in hushed and tremulous tones.
Carry put out her hands as if to push some spectre away. "Oh, don't ask me, don't ask me; I don't know; I can't tell you," she cried.
What could Edith say? she was appalled. The fresh inexperienced heart received a first lesson in the mysterious evils of life. She who had fretted and chafed so at the partial separation that had arisen between them, she was glad of a pretext to leave her sister. She could scarcely believe this to be possible, and yet so it was. Nor did she wish to run to her mother with her discovery, to appeal to her against Carry's misconception, against the monstrous character of the suggestion altogether, as would have been her first impulse in any other case. No; she was convinced of the reality of it, little as she desired to be convinced. A gleam of painful light seemed to fall across the new tenor of their life. She thought for a moment that she saw the very earth, solid and unyielding, break into dangerous pits and chasms before her feet. The pain of this discovery was two-fold—both poignant, yet one worse than the other. To think that her father, whom she had hitherto loved and trusted, not with any excess of devotion, but yet with an honest confidence that he would ask nothing wrong, nothing unreasonable from his children, should thus threaten to become a domestic tyrant, an enemy of truth, was terrible; but still more terrible was the conviction which overwhelmed the girl that Carry, with all her imagination and feeling—Carry, the poet of the family, the first one to have a romance and a lover—would not have strength to resist any attempted coercion. Oh, if it had only been me! Edith said to herself, clenching her hands tight. But then she had no Edward, no romance—she was fancy free: even were it possible to force her into any connection she disliked (which Edith did not think it would be), at all events she could not be made false to another. But Carry—Carry, who was all heart—to force her to deny that heart would be doubly cruel. Little Edith woke out of her careless youth to see this wonderful and great danger at her very side, with all that bewilderment of feeling which attends the first disclosure of the evils in life. She could not believe it, and yet she knew it was true. She remembered tones in her father's voice, lights in his eyes, which she never seemed to have understood before. Was this what they meant? that when his time and opportunity came, he would be a tyrant, a remorseless and unfaltering ruler, suffering no rebellion? Edith trembled a little. Perhaps she, too, might fall under that despotism one day. But she did not feel afraid for herself. Oh, if it had only been me! she said, ungrammatical, as excitement generally is. It would be hard to say what ground she had for her self-confidence. Carry was the genius of the family, and little Edith only the youngest, the household pet, whom nobody regarded as in a position to make decisions or form opinions for herself. Why was it to her eyes that this sudden insight had been given? It is not usually a happy gift. Blessed are they, we may rather say, who can deceive themselves—whose eyes are made blind, and not more fatally clear, by love. Edith hastened out of doors, out of sight or speech of any one, to try if she could escape from this revelation which had opened upon her, so much against her will. It was a misty dull day, with a great deal of moisture in the air—moisture which seemed to communicate itself to Edith's eyes, and get into her throat. She hastened down the path which wound through the birches, the poetical "birks of Lindores," to the river lying far below, and already sending a soft sound of running water to soothe her. About half-way down was a great beech-tree, round which a seat had been placed. Here there was a view, not of the wide champaign, like that at Dalrulzian, but of a portion of the highroad, just where it began to mount the hill towards the Castle. On the other side lay the river, visible at the foot of the bank, and running somewhat strong and wild under the cliffs on the opposite side, which threw it into deep shadow. But it was not the river, though so much the more beautiful of the two, it was the highroad which attracted Edith's attention. As she stood looking out upon it, some one passed, riding slowly along, but turning his head to catch the first glimpse of the Castle. His appearance seemed to throw a sudden light upon her thoughts. He was a heavy, large man, upon a powerful black horse,—an apparition big enough to be identified, even at that distance. The ladies had all been very free in their remarks upon this representative of their county neighbours. They had not given him a very encouraging reception, yet he had repeated his visits, too stolid, they had thought, to perceive that he was not wanted. As Edith stood and gazed at him, with the blood curdling about her heart, it flashed upon her that her father had given no countenance to their criticisms. He had told them that Mr Torrance was one of the richest commoners in Scotland, and Tinto such a house as any one might be proud to possess. She had paid little attention to these words at the time, but they seemed to repeat themselves in the very air now. It was a day of revelation to Edith. She saw all that it meant, and foresaw all it was coming to, with a gleam of terrible insight. Oh no, no! she moaned to herself in a kind of helpless protest against fate.
Mr Torrance of Tinto was the representative of an old county family, but he would not have been the richest commoner in Scotland if he had been no more than this. A variety of other circumstances, however, had combined to bring about this effect, and elevate a man who was no better, at the best that could be said for him, than a rude yeoman-sportsman at soul, into a person of the greatest local importance and almost national notability. The previous Torrance of Tinto, a man of some rough practical power, had allied himself to some degree in business, and to a much greater degree in life, with a great railway contractor—one of the men who, coming from nothing, have made colossal fortunes, and found admittance for their children, if not for themselves, into the foremost ranks of society. Mr Torrance married this man's daughter, and all the money which the original navvy had quarried out of the bowels of the earth, or gathered from its surface, went to increase the lands and the power of Tinto, where this daughter, his only child, a woman with the magnificent ideas of expenditure which enormous wealth so naturally brings along with it, disposed herself to reign like a princess, making her husband's old house the centre of a new palace, fit for a duke at least. The old man, her father, always thrifty and sparing in his own person, would have her stinted in nothing; and perhaps, had she lived long, her husband would have had little enough left him of the huge fortune which she had brought into the family. But fortunately (for the family), after she had alarmed him beyond measure by unbounded expenditure for a few years, and had completed the new house and filled it with costly furniture, in all of which her father encouraged her, the death of both within a year of each other relieved the owner of Tinto of his fears, and left him free to complete the training of his son as he pleased. He made him much such a man as he had himself been, but without the brains, which are not transmitted so easily as money. Patrick Torrance had indeed been sent to Oxford to have the regulation mark stamped upon him as an educated man: but those were days in which so much as this meant was easier than now; and it is not very hard even now, as may be seen. He came back more horsey, more doggy than he had been before, if possible,—a man without an intellectual taste or higher instinct, bored to death, as he himself avowed, with the grand house, full of pictures, and statues, and marble, and porcelain, which the taste of his mother had accumulated. Never was such a magnificent place in the quietude of such a homely country. The daughter of the railway man was as extreme in her taste for art as the daughter of one of her father's navvies might have been in dress. There was not a wall, not a passage or staircase, that was not laden with decoration. Great artists had designed the chimney-pieces and cornices. The velvet, the satin, the embroidery, were all the most costly, and, according to the lights of that period, the most correct that money could buy. The old man, whose money had bought all this, went about the gorgeous rooms rubbing his hands with a continual chuckle of satisfaction so long as he lived; and the poor woman who had created the luxurious house swept through in dresses to correspond, with satisfaction not less than if she had been a daughter of the Medici,—who, to be sure, made their money in business too. But when that fine Renaissance lady died, and all her friends were scattered, and the place fell back into the possession of the commonplace country laird and his boy, coming in ruddy from the fields or damp from the hill, afraid to tread in their shooting boots on the luxurious carpets or throw themselves down in the satin chairs, the incongruity of the establishment was manifest to every eye. Mr Torrance, the father, had been deeply impressed by the cost of everything his wife had bought and planned. He had been horrified and indignant in the first instance; but when it had been proved that he had no power to resist, and that the money must be expended for all these luxuries, he had taken what satisfaction he could from the price. "Do you know what she gave for that?" he would say; "it's all dash'd extravagance. I cannot away with it; but it was her doing, and as she had plenty, she had to please herself." It was in this way that he spoke of his wife. And when she died, the splendid house she had built was shut up,—not from sentiment, but because the set of rooms still remaining, which belonged to the old house of Tinto, was much more in harmony with the habits of the master of the house.
Now that he too was dead, his son followed his example in preferring the old den of the race. But he had more appreciation of the dignity of owning a house such as no one in the country could "hold a candle" to. The fine decorations had not all stood the neglect of twenty years, but still there was enough of magnificence to overawe the district; and Patrick Torrance had enough of his mother's blood in him to enjoy the consciousness of so much luxury and costliness. He lived in the old library, which was low and dingy, and looked out upon the dark bit of shrubbery behind the house and the road that led to the stables; but periodically he threw the grand empty rooms open, and had a great dinner-party or a ball, which excited all the gentry for miles round. It would be vain to say that there was not on these occasions more excitement than was natural solely in view of a great entertainment. While society is constituted as it is, it will not be possible that a great matrimonial prize, such as Mr Patrick Torrance unquestionably was, should thus be shown, as open to public competition, without a certain excitement. If a great post worth thousands a-year could be won by the most attractive and brilliant appearance in a ball-room, what a flutter there would be among the golden youth of society! and the master of Tinto was more valuable than most of the very finest appointments. He was as good as a Viceroyship of India without the necessity of expatriation. Consequently it is not to be supposed that the young ladies of the neighbourhood could prepare for their appearance in these gilded if somewhat tarnished halls of his without a good deal of agitation, or that the mothers, or even the fathers of possible competitors, could escape some share of the same excitement. Some of the girls, let us do them the justice to say, were as much alarmed lest Pat Torrance, as he was called, should cast his big projecting eyes upon them, as others were anxious for that notice. He was not in himself much adapted to please a maiden's eye. He was very dark, strongly bearded, with large eyesà fleur de têteand somewhat bloodshot. His friends maintained that he had "a good figure," and it certainly was tall and strong. His voice was as large as his person, and somewhat hoarse—a deep bass, which made a vibration in the air. He was an excellent shot, and hunted indefatigably, though it was beginning to be said, notwithstanding his youth, that Pat was too heavy for distinction in the hunting-field. With all these qualities he had an eye to his interest, rich though he was; and, though not clever, was said to be very fortunate in his investments, and to keep a careful hand over his money. Now and then he would be lavish, outdoing all that was known in these parts in the way of extravagance; but for the most part he lived as his father had done before him, in the old rooms of the old mansion-house of Tinto, where not a carpet or a curtain had been removed since the time of his grandfather. There was perhaps a touch of humour, somehow struck out by the contact of the two races, which made the contrast of these two manners of living pleasant to his fancy and to his rude and elementary pride; or perhaps it was mere instinct, and had no meaning in it at all—the habits of the limited and uncultured countryman, diversified by that delight in an occasional "blow out," which is the compensation of the navvy for his rude toils. There was no doubt that from the time of his father's death, which occurred when he was about twenty-eight, Pat Torrance had made up his mind to marry. And he had inspected all the marriageable girls in the country with a serious intention which disgusted some and amused others, and filled a few with breathless hope. In the latter class were ladies of very different pretensions indeed, from Miss Webster of Thrums, who was the greatest rider in the country, and never wanting when anything was going on, down to the bold, handsome, black-eyed daughter of the landlord of the Bear at Dunearn, which was the inn Mr Torrance used when he went into the county town. He was just as likely, people thought, to make such a match as any other; his style of courtship was more in harmony with a bar-room than a drawing-room. This conviction made the balls at Tinto less exciting to the feminine community generally as time went on; but still there is never any telling what caprice may sway a sultan's choice.
And alas! it is a fact that, whether by their own will or by that of their parents, Pat Torrance might have married almost any lady in the county. He was not himself to them, but such a cluster of worldly advantages as scarcely any mortal woman could resist. He was, as we have said, far beyond in value the best of the appointments for which they could not, and their brothers could try. He meant a fine position, a magnificent house, a great fortune. To be sure there was a drawback to this, which only a few acknowledged. When Mrs Sempill pointed out to her daughter Agnes, whom he had honoured with some passing notice, that in case she married him she would have "everything that heart could desire—at least everything that money could buy,"—Agnes, who was a clever girl, put forth a condition. "I should have just as much as Pat Torrance thought proper of the things that money can buy," the young woman said, with sudden insight. I am afraid, however, that Agnes Sempill would have married him all the same, her family being so poor, if he had put himself at her disposal. But he did not, and she was glad. Indeed he made himself of all the greater importance in the county that he came to no decision, but went on giving his balls three or four times a-year, and examining with a critical eye every girl who appeared on the horizon, every newdébutante. And he was asked everywhere in those days. His importance was fully recognised.
This was the condition in which things were when the new family came to the Castle. Mr Torrance was one of the first callers, partly because his pride as at once the head of an old family and the richest man in the county made him eager to assert his position with the new Earl as a leader of the local society—a position which not even the chances their daughters might have of sharing it would have prevailed on the other county magnates to permit him,—and partly because of the new candidates for his favour who were to be found in the family of Lindores. Notwithstanding the prevalent idea that Bessie Runciman at the Black Bear in Dunearn had just as good a chance for the prize as any competitor, nothing could be further from the fact or the intentions of the hero. His determination all along had been to procure himself a wife who should be in harmony, not so much with himself as with the grandeur of his house and what he believed to be his position; and the hunting lady and the publican's daughter had been equally out of the question. For himself, he might have liked either of them well enough; but as a matter of fact, it was not too much refinement, but not refinement enough, which this rude squire found among his country neighbours. None of them was fine enough for Tinto. He wanted somebody who would be at home in the grand rooms overloaded with decoration—who would be, if possible, superior to the killing splendour which made himself feel so small. And no woman yet had impressed Pat as sufficiently magnificent for this purpose. He wanted some one more imposing,—a lady of Tinto who might, as he desired in his heart, receive the Prince of Wales on occasion, or even the Queen herself. When he paid his first visit to Lindores, the Earl alone received him, and he had no chance of inspecting the daughters of the house; but he had met them as he rode home again, coming back from their drive in the little pony-carriage, of which they had just become possessed. Edith, new to all these delights, was driving her sister; and her bright little face, full of life and smiles, turned curiously upon him as he stood aside on his big black horse to let them pass. But that was not what caught his eye. Beside her was a pale and gentle countenance, unlike anything which had hitherto been presented to his notice. Pat's heart, if he had a heart, or the big pulse that did service for it, gave a bound as he looked. It seemed to him at the first glance that this new face was more aristocratic, more distinguished, for not being pretty. The lilies and roses of the other were familiar to him. Bright eyes and fine complexions were by no means rare in the county. They were to be found everywhere, in the cottages as well as in the castles. He was not impressed by them. The smiles and animation were common things; but Lady Caroline with her gentle paleness, her slim form pliant and bending,—even her nose, which was a little too long, was the impersonation of refinement and rank, and fine superiority. His imagination, if he had an imagination, took fire. He thought he could see her moving about with languid grace through his finesalons, far more fine than they, lending them an air of delicacy and importance which they had never possessed before. He felt himself to be "struck" by Lady Caroline as he never had been "struck" till now. That was rank, he said to himself admiringly. To be sure, rank was what he had wanted; he had never realised it before, but now he perceived it as plain as daylight. He had been wiser than he was aware of in his fastidiousness; and now he saw suddenly presented before him the very object of which he had been in search. Lady Caroline Torrance!—that was what it was.
This chance meeting, and the instant conviction that followed, had taken place some time before the interview between the sisters which we have described. How it was that the suitor communicated his wishes to the Earl, or the Earl to poor Carry, it is impossible to tell—or if, indeed, up to this time, any communication had been made on the subject. Most likely there had been no communication; but the proposal, which turned the light into darkness for Carry, was in the air, overshadowing everything. Her father saw it in the dark face of Pat Torrance, and she surmised it in her father's eyes. Before a word had been said she knew her fate, struggling dumbly against it like a creature fascinated and magnetised in the grip of a monster, but without any possibility or hope of escape. There was something more terrible in this silent certainty than there would have been in any conflict. She felt herself sucked in as to a whirlpool, overpowered,—all her forces taken from her in the giddy rush with which the days and hours were carrying her on, irresistible, to that climax. It was this fatal consciousness which made her cry out, "I will never give him up;" which was the cry, not of resolution, but of despair. All that she could do in her sick and failing soul was to grasp at and cling to the weeds on the bank, while the current carried her wildly on, plucking them out of her hands. Edith, who was of so different a nature, stood by appalled, astonished, not knowing how to account for her sister's helplessness. She was positive, as her mother said, not visionary, incapable either of divining what was going to happen or of yielding to it. Why Carry could not simply make up her mind to refuse, to stand fast, to resist whatever powers might be brought to bear upon her, was a thing which Edith could not understand.
And stranger still, Lady Lindores had not even found it out. She disliked Mr Torrance, and made no secret of her dislike. "If that is your type of a Scotch laird, I cannot say I like the species," she said, eliciting a soft, "Oh, mamma!" from Edith, who remembered very well a statement of an entirely contrary character which her mother had once made. "If young Erskine is a type of a young Scotch laird, I am disposed to fall in love with the class," was what Lady Lindores had then said. Edith remembered it distinctly, but gave her tongue a little malicious bite, and would not recall it to her mother's mind; for was not young Erskine coming back? But Lady Lindores's feeling about Torrance was more than passive. She took care to let him see that he was not a favourite in the house. She wondered audibly, even after the eyes of Edith had been opened, what that odious man wanted here; and indeed did all but refuse to ask him to adîner intime, at which her husband desired his presence. "Torrance of Tinto," she cried, with a cloud on her face; "why Torrance of Tinto? He has already dined here. Why should we have him again?"
"Why not?" said the Earl, with a still deeper shadow on his face. Lady Lindores saw very clearly when her attention was aroused; but she was a high-minded woman, slow to be awakened to suspicion, and scorning to think evil. It seemed to her an evidence of a poor nature to suppose any one else capable of an act you would not have done yourself.
"Why not? I think that jumps at the eyes," she said. It was Lady Lindores's weakness to employ idioms which, being translated idioms, sounded very strange to ordinary ears. This was so far comprehensible because she had lived abroad the greater part of her life, and she thought the polyglot chatter which is so common, especially among the English abroad, vulgar; so she translated her French, and thought it less objectionable. "That jumps at the eyes," she said; "he is not a friend of the house—only a recent acquaintance—and he has dined here already. Why have him again? He is not an attractive person. You cannot care for him, Robert; and he is no favourite with the girls."
"The girls must learn to receive the people I approve of," said the Earl, "or we shall quarrel. You must make them aware of that."
"Quarrel! for the sake of Mr Torrance! That is carrying clanship a great way."
"There is no clanship in it. You ought to know better, my dear. Your English fallacies are quite out of place here. If I had a clan (which I have not—we are purely Norman, not Celtic at all), Pat Torrance could have had as little to do with it as John Smith."
"My dear Robert," said Lady Lindores, for she had not learned to address her husband by his title, "you take it very seriously. I meant your kindness for your own people. But for a kind prejudice, which I admire and respect, for your old neighbours, you never would put up with a being like this Tinto, as they call him,—a rich fox-hunter, with the mind of a ploughman."
"You will oblige me, Mary," said her husband, coldly, "by restraining your opinion—at all events until you have a better right to express it. What do you know of Pat Torrance? I should very much prefer that you did not commit yourself on the subject. You might regret it after."
"Commit myself!—regret it!" Lady Lindores gazed at her husband with consternation. She had absolutely no guide to what he could mean; but as he stood to his point and would not yield, and as one must certainly yield when such a question arises, she found herself unwillingly obliged to give in. She was behind her children in comprehension, strange as it seems to say so. Lady Lindores had not been unfavourable to Beaufort's claims when first he made his suit to Carry; but she had been perhaps a little disappointed in him as the years passed on. He had not shown the energy, the determination, which a man in such circumstances ought to show. He had made no passionate effort to obtain his bride, such as Carry's mother felt her child was worth. And it was a long time now since Lady Lindores had taken any notice of the lingering engagement which her husband had never positively sanctioned, but which had lingered on for a year or two, coming to nothing. She had thought it best not to interfere. Perhaps Mr Beaufort might think it his duty to release Carry, now that her position was so much changed. The mother did not feel that she could ask him to do so; but if anything had happened to the tardy lover—had he been ill, or died, or proved fickle, she would have felt that Providence was interfering on their behalf. In the meantime, she thought it the best policy to say nothing about it. And it was this reticence which she intended for wisdom, which prevented any explanation between them, and kept her ignorant of what even Edith knew. It did not occur to her to connect her child, so delicate and refined, with the rough and coarse squire, whom she could not tolerate. How her husband could put up with him Lady Lindores could not conceive. He certainly meant something by it, she thought; but what did he mean? Was it some scheme of tactics in respect to the next election? which already, she knew, gave Lord Lindores great concern. Perhaps the Earl, who had a devouring ambition, now that he found an opening for it, thought it well to have the richest man in the county under his influence. This was all that she had yet divined. "Your father insists upon having that Mr Torrance," she said to the girls. "What he can see in him, I cannot imagine. But that does not look at us. We are not called upon to make martyrs of ourselves for papa's political friends."
Carry looked up eagerly as her mother spoke. "Political!" she said, with a quiver of hopeful eagerness in her voice. "Is that the reason?" This eager tone and broken question would have made Lady Lindores wonder had she not been full of the subject from her own point of view.
"What else?" she said. "You cannot suppose a man like your father can find anything else in Mr Torrance to attract him. Politics are very entrancing, but, like necessity, they bring you acquainted with strange bedfellows. Papa thinks, no doubt, that he ought to turn his influence to account."
"Oh, if that is the reason!" said Carry, clasping her hands together, with something like an ecstasy of prayer and thankfulness in her face. Lady Lindores, though she thought the emotion excessive—but then Carry was always visionary—understood that her daughter's delicate soul had been wounded by her father's regard for so unattractive a person. She patted her child upon the cheek tenderly.
"You must not consider yourself responsible for all the things we do in the prosecution of our several parts," she said. "I feel, for my own part, that I take a great deal too much notice of old Gardener. I am getting much too fond of him. This is more innocent, I allow, than your father's fancy for Mr Torrance; for I don't insist on asking old Gardener to dinner."
"That I never should object to!" cried Carry, kissing her mother with sudden enthusiasm. She was cheered beyond measure by the comparison, and by Lady Lindores's absolute ignorance of any other pretension on the part of Torrance. Perhaps she had been deceiving herself, and attributing to her father intentions that had never entered his mind. Carry was too thankful to think that this might be how it was. But Edith, the clear-sighted, avoided her sister's eye. She made no comment on what her mother said. Edith felt that, however others might be deceived, sheknew.
Alas! it was not very long before everybody knew. The demeanour of Pat Torrance at the dinner, to which Lady Lindores had been so reluctant to ask him, gave much occasion for thought to the other guests who knew the man and his ways. These said to each other that Pat had put his foot in it at last—that he had made his choice, and thrown his handkerchief at almost the only woman in the county, who was not sure to respond to it. Nothing could have been colder or more repellent than Lady Caroline was to this great matrimonial prize—the idol whom they all bowed down to, though some with minds which rebelled against the rude and ungodlike divinity. Among these interested lookers-on were some who rejoiced to see that he was likely to be made "to see his place" and submit to the humiliation of refusal; and some who, conscious that in their own families there were worshippers who would not have refused to bow down, were angry with poor Carry for "setting up" to be so much better than her neighbours. The most sagacious of these, however, reserved their judgment. There was something in the demonstration with which the Earl brought Pat forward and patted him on the back—something, too, of pain in poor Lady Carry's mild eyes, which made these more profound observers pause. The Lindores were poor. There were two daughters to provide for; and it was not a matter to be settled so easily, or which the parents would allow to turn entirely on a young girl's fancy. And then she was not even pretty, and she had got into the twenties—not a mere girl, with all the world before her. The wise would not give any opinion on the subject. They shook their heads and refused to commit themselves. But this was exactly what Pat Torrance did. He was so satisfied that here at last he had got everything he wanted, that he displayed his decision in Carry's favour from the first day. He made a spectacle of himself to the whole county, looking on with the keenest attention; and oh, how pleased society would have been in the district had he been once for all made an example of, made a fool of, as they said,—held up to public scorn and ridicule as a rejected suitor! As the wooing went on, the desire for such a consummation—the anticipation of it—grew daily in intensity; and it was not very long doubtful. One of the usual great balls was given at Tinto, which was specially in honour of the new-comers, and took place as soon as they were out of their mourning. It was evidently a crisis in the life of the master of the house, and to the greater part of the guests all the interest of a highly exciting drama was mingled with the milder impulses of amusement. Lady Caroline, everybody said, had never looked less well. She was very pale;—it was even said that freckles, caused by her sinful exposure of her face to all the elements during the summer, diminished the sheen of her ordinarily white forehead—her nose was longer than ever. But all this only increased, to her admirer, the charm of her presence. She was independent of beauty. Though she was very simply dressed—too simply for a lady of rank—yet the air with which she moved about these fine rooms was (Pat thought) such as no one else who had ever been there had possessed. She was superior to them, as she was superior to the lilies and the roses, the wreathed smiles and shining eyes of the other girls. He followed her about with demonstrations of devotion which no one could mistake. He would have danced with nobody but her, in the most marked abandonment of all his duties as host, would she have permitted him. Even when he danced with others his eyes followed her, and the only talk he vouchsafed to his partners was about Lady Car, as he called her, with offensive familiarity and a sort of intoxication. As for poor Lady Caroline herself, it was apparent to every one that she retreated continually into out-of-the-way corners—hiding herself behind the old maids and dowagers, who were never left out of such gatherings, and liked to come and look on and criticise the girls, and tell how things had been done in their day. Several of these old ladies, distressed to see a girl not dancing, had betrayed poor Carry's hiding-place by their kind efforts to get her a partner; and the result had been two or three times that she was thus delivered over into the very clutches of the wolf.
"Mr Patrick," one of those kind ladies said, rising from her seat and taking hold of his arm as he prowled about, wondering where Carry could have disappeared to, "do you no think it's discreditable to the county that a young leddy newly come among us, and a person of rank—and, what is better, a sweet young creature—should be left sitting down the whole night and get no dancing?"
It was on this occasion that Miss Barbara Erskine won the heart of the persecuted girl. She said to her in a strong whisper which went through Carry's ear like a—skewer (the simile is undignified, but suits the fact)—"My dear, there's that eediot, Jean Sempill, drawing attention to you. If you want to get out of the way, slip away behind me; there's a door there that leads into the corridor, and so you can get back to your mother. Stay by your mother—that's your safest way." Thus Carry was delivered for the moment. But, alas! her mother could not protect her effectually. When Pat Torrance came boldly up with his dark face glowing, and his projecting eyes ready, as a spectator remarked, to jump out of his head, and said, "This is our dance," what could any one do for her? Lady Lindores had become alarmed, not knowing what to make of Carry's agitation; but even a mother in these circumstances can do so little. "I am afraid she is tired, Mr Torrance," Lady Lindores said; but Carry's arm was already in his. She had not presence of mind even to take the advantage of such an excuse.
When he brought her back, however, to her mother's side, nobody could have helped seeing that something had happened. Poor Carry was as white as her dress: she seemed scarcely able to hold herself upright, and sank down by her mother's side as if she neither saw nor heard anything that was going on round her. On the other hand, Pat Torrance was crimson, his eyes were rolling in his head. He said almost roughly—"You were right, Lady Lindores. Lady Car is tired; but I make no doubt she will be herself again to-morrow." It was a curious speech to make, and there was a tone of threatening and anger in his somewhat elevated voice which roused the liveliest displeasure in the mind of Lady Lindores; but he was gone before she could say anything. "What is the matter?" she said, taking her daughter's hand. "Rouse yourself, Carry; everybody is staring. What has happened?" "Oh, nothing, nothing! Oh, mamma, let us go home," the poor girl cried. Her lips, her very eyelids, trembled. She looked as if she were about to faint. Lady Lindores was glad to see her husband approaching; but he too had a threatening and stern look. She called him to her, and begged him to ask for the carriage. "Carry is quite ill," she said. "If you will stay with Edith, I can send it back for you;—but poor Car has looked like a ghost all night." "She has looked much more like a fool—as she is," said her father, between his set teeth; but at last he consented that she should be taken home, seeing the state of collapse in which she was. He took her down-stairs, supporting her on his arm, which was necessary, as she could scarcely walk; but when they skirted the dance, in which the master of the house was performing, talking loudly and laughing with forced merriment all the time the Earl, though he was a well-bred man, could not help giving his daughter's arm a sharp pressure, which hurt her. "I might have known you would behave like a fool," he said in a low undertone, which nobody but Carry could hear. She wavered for a moment, like a young tree in the wind, but clung to him and hurried past replying nothing. Lady Lindores following, formed her own conclusions, though she did not hear what her husband said. She took her child into her arms when they were safe in the carriage, rolling along the dark roads in the dimness of the summer night, and Carry cried and sobbed on her mother's breast. "I understand that you have refused him," Lady Lindores said. "But what then? Why should you be so wretched about it, Carry? It is a kind of vanity to be so sorry for the man. You may be sure Mr Torrance will get over it, my love."
Then Carry managed to stammer forth the real source of her terror. She was not thinking of Mr Torrance, but of papa. What would he say to her? would he ever forgive her? And then it was Lady Lindores's turn to be amazed. "My darling, you must compose yourself," she said; "this is greater nonsense than the other. Papa! What can it matter to your father?Hewill never force your inclinations; and how can this coarse bumpkin interest such a man as he is?" She became almost angry at the sight of Carry's tears. "Allow me to know your father a little better than you do," she cried. "Mr Torrance! who is Mr Torrance? I can't believe that he would favour such a suitor for a moment. But supposing that he did so,—supposing he thought, as people are apt to do, that money covers a multitude of sins—your father is not a worldly-minded man, Carry; he is ambitious, but not for money,—supposing just for the sake of argument——Anyhow, my dear, that could only be if the man happened to please you in his own person. We might like the match better because the pretender was rich, nothing more. Can you really think that papa would be a tyrant to you,—that he would compel you to marry any one? Carry, my love, you have got an attack of the nerves; it is your good sense that has given way."
Carry wept abundantly while her mother thus talked to her, and the agitation which she had so long shut up in her heart calmed down. Every word Lady Lindores said was perfectly reasonable, and to have represented her kind father to herself as a domestic tyrant was monstrous, she felt; but yet—she could not tell her mother all the trifling circumstances, the tones, the looks which had forced that conviction upon her. But she was willing, very willing, to allow herself to be persuaded that it was all a mistake, and to accept the gentle reproof and banter with which Lady Lindores soothed her excitement. "To refuse a man is always disagreeable," she said, philosophically, "especially as one must always feel one is to blame in letting him come the length of a proposal, and self-esteem whispers that he will find it hard to console himself. No, my Carry, no; don't distress yourself too much. I don't want to be cynical; but men of Mr Torrance's type soon console themselves. Men have died and worms have eaten them, but not for love."
"It is not that, it is not that," Carry protested among her tears.
But her mother would hear of nothing more alarming. "It is a wrong to your father to think he would take up the cause of such a man," she said, indignantly; "and I should have been horribly disappointed in you, Carry, if you had thought of him for a moment." Carry was so soothed, so comforted, so almost happy in her trouble, that the inmost doors of her heart opened to her mother. "Whatever he had been, oh, mother, do you think I could forget Edward?" she said. His name had not been mentioned between them for months before.
"Edward," said Lady Lindores, shaking her head; and then she kissed the pleading expectant face, which she could only feel, not see. "He should have showed more energy, Carry. Had he been worthy of you, he would not have left this question unsettled till now."
"What could he do?" cried Carry, roused out of her prostration; "he could not invent business for himself." Again Lady Lindores shook her head; but by this time they had reached their own door, and in the fervour of her defence and championship of her lover, Carry got out of the carriage a very different creature from the prostrate and fainting girl who had been put into it at Tinto. She went with her mother to her room, feverish and anxious to plead the cause of Edward. Lady Lindores was a romantic woman, who believed in love, and had taught her children to do the same. But she was disappointed that her daughter's lover had not been inspired by his love; that he had not found success, and secured his own cause beyond the power of evil fortune. Arguing against this adverse opinion, and defending Edward on every question, Carry recovered her courage and her composure. She felt able to fight for him to her last gasp when she left her mother, shaking her head still, but always well disposed to every generous plea; for the moment she had forgotten all the nearer dangers which had seemed so terrible to her an hour before.
Lady Lindores sat up in her dressing-gown till her husband and Edith came back. He was very gloomy, she excited and breathless, with a feverish sparkle in her eyes, which her mother noticed for the first time. She wondered if little Edith was in the secret too—that secret which she had herself scarcely thought of till to-night; and her husband's aspect filled her with strange anxieties. Was it possible that she, who had known them so long, her husband for all the most important time of his life, her child since her first breath, should have discoveries to make in them now? The thought was painful to her, and she tried to dismiss it from her mind. "Carry is better," she said, with an attempt to treat the subject lightly. "It was the glare of these rooms, I suppose. They are very handsome, but there was too much heat and too much light."
"I hope it is the last time we shall have any such scenes from Carry," said the Earl. "You ought to speak to her very seriously. She has been behaving like a fool."
"Dear Robert," said Lady Lindores, "it is trying to a girl of any feeling to have a proposal made to her in a ball-room, and I daresay Mr Torrance was rude and pressing. It is exactly what I should have expected of him."
"Since when," said the Earl, sternly, "have you studied Mr Torrance so closely as to divine what may be expected of him?"
"Robert! I have not studied him at all, nor do I attempt to divine. Carry's agitation, her fright, her panic, if I may call it so——"
"Were simply ridiculous, ridiculous!" cried Lord Lindores. "I always thought her sentimental, but I never suspected her to be a fool."
"Carry is no fool," cried her mother, indignantly; "you know very well she has both spirit and sense, and more than sense. She is not a common girl. She ought not to be treated as one. And this man, this fox-hunter, this vulgar laird——"
"As he will probably be your son-in-law, you will do well to avoid epithets," Lord Lindores said.
"My son-in-law!" said his wife, in a suppressed shriek. "But Carry has refused him," she added, with relief.
"To-night—being flurried, and not knowing her own mind; but she will know better to-morrow."
"Robert! for heaven's sake, when she has been so distressed by this most hateful proposal, you surely will not suffer it to be repeated!"
"Why should it be a hateful proposal?" he said.
"Why?" Lady Lindores did not know how to answer; if he did not see it, if it did not jump at his eyes, as she said to herself, what explanation would make it clearer? She tried to smile and approach him on another side. "Dear Robert," she said, tremulously—"to think of you taking the part of such a man! He must have some fine qualities, I am sure, or you never could have endured the outside of him, or his manners, or his talk. He is so unlike you, so unlike anything the girls have ever been taught to care for." If this was flattery, surely it may be forgiven to the anxious mother. She was anxious too, as a wife, that her husband should not come down from the pedestal on which it had been her pride to keep him for so many years.
"That is all very well," he said, impatiently; "but I never set myself up as a model of what my children were to like. Yes; he has fine qualities, golden qualities. Do you know that he is the richest commoner in Scotland, Lady Lindores?"
"I know," she said, with quick offence, the tears starting suddenly to her eyes, "that my name is Mary, and that I hate this wretched title, which I shall never get used to, and never tolerate if my husband calls me by it. We are all, all, put asunder, all changed, and finding each other out since we came here."
This little outburst was partly real and partly a half-conscious art to find an outlet for her excitement. Her husband was more touched by it than if it had been more serious. The complaint was fantastic, yet it was one which love might be excused for making. "My love," he said, "of course I meant nothing unkind. There have been times when I called you Mrs Lindores in jest, as I did just now. But, seriously, you must see what I am thinking of—you must give me your support. We are poor. If Rintoul is to take the position to which he is entitled after me——"
"You mean Robin? I tell you I hate those new names!" she cried.
"This is foolish, Mary. If he is to enter upon life when his time comes weighted with a heavy provision for his sisters—consider; there is poor Jane. She is quite young; she may outlive us all: and if I were to die, there would be two jointures besides Car and Edith."
"Let me be struck off the list," cried Lady Lindores. "I will never be a burden on my son. Robert, God forgive you; for a distant evil like this, would you bring that man into our family, and force an unwilling marriage on your child? But no, no; I am doing you wrong; your thoughts have never gone so far."
The Earl made no reply. His face was like a thunder-cloud, lowering and heavy—a darkness from which, at any moment, fire and flame might burst forth.
"No, no," said the mother. "I understand what you have thought. I did so once myself when—you remember—young Ashestiel came in our way. I thought if they would but take to each other; if they would only see what a natural harmony they would make! Yes, yes, I remember, I was provoked beyond measure that they would not see it; and when he went away, I did not know how to contain myself. I was angry with my innocent Carry for not caring. I understand you, Robert. If by any chance her fancy had been taken by this young millionaire; but dear, how could it? You would yourself have thought less of Carry had she liked such a man. Acknowledge: he is not much better than a boor—with, perhaps, a boor's virtues."
She looked up when she had got so far, and stopped in sheer amazement at the sight of her husband's face. She had never seen any indication before of what she now found in it. Rage with difficulty smothered; a determined intention to follow his own way; an uneasy shame turning to bitterness and passion. His voice was quite hoarse with the effort to contain himself. "I thought," he said, "that at least you were not one of the silly women who speak of things they don't understand. But I was mistaken. You will rather encourage a foolish girl in a piece of unworthy romance, than show her her duty—her duty! But neither you nor she, by——shall hold me up to ridicule! She shall take this husband I choose for her, or by——" Here he became aware how much he was committing himself. He stopped, gazed at her defiantly for a moment, then began to pace up and down the room in great confusion. "The short and the long of it is," he said, "that I can't suffer Carry, for a girlish prejudice, to throw away such a position. He might be the first man in the county," Lord Lindores said. "He has twice as much as we have, and no title to keep up; no encumbrance of any kind. She might be a sort of princess. I cannot allow all this to be thrown away for a mere fancy. If she does not like him, she must learn to like him. What would she have? He is not apetit maître, certainly; but he is a man, every inch of him—his family good, his health good, a magnificent house; what could any woman want more? She will have everything that heart can desire."