CHAPTER XXIII.
"HOW SHOULD I GREET THEE?"
The German diplomatist took Cecil in to dinner, and she found herself seated a very long way from Major Gordon, who was quite hidden from her by a barrier of hothouse flowers, crystallised fruits, and oxydised silver candelabra. There was a little interval in the drawing-room after the long elaborate banquet, during which Flo and the rest of the amateur performers disappeared from the horizon. There were constant arrivals of people who came from short distances to assist at the private theatricals, and the room filled rapidly in this interregnum. And in all the time Major Gordon and Cecil O'Boyneville happened to be at different ends of the long room, almost as far apart as they had been with the Overland journey between them, Cecil thought, as she caught glimpses of the familiar figure now and then at the end of a long vista.
There was rather a longer interval than had been anticipated, and Mr. Lobyer, lounging in his favourite attitude against one of the mantelpieces, looked at his watch more than once with a disagreeable sneer upon his face.
"Half-past ten," he said, "and these amateurs were to have begun at ten. I suppose Evershed has lost his boots—or his memory—at the last moment; or my wife has set fire to her wig, or the machinery of the curtains is found to be unmanageable, or there is something agreeable of that kind in the wind. I never knew people make fools of themselves in this way that they didn't come to grief in some manner."
But Mr. Lobyer's forebodings were not realised. The door was flung open presently, and a solemn butler announced that the performance was about to commence; whereupon there was considerable rejoicing and some little bustle.
The German diplomatist again presented himself to Cecil, and escorted by that gentleman, she made her way to the billiard-room, where, in the confusion attendant on the placing of some fifty or sixty people, she had little time to notice who occupied the seat next her. It was only when the rustling of silk and fluttering of tulle, the whispering and exclaiming, the questioning and answering, and entreating and refusing, and all the polite squabbling was over, and every one fairly settled, that Cecil glanced towards the person on her right hand. Her heart had been beating at an abnormal pace all the evening; but perhaps it beat a little faster when she perceived that her right-hand neighbour was Major Gordon.
They were to be seated side by side during the performance of a five-act comedy—for two hours at least—so near that when he moved his arm in unfolding his perfumed programme he stirred the airy puffings of her dress. As yet he was—or appeared to be unconscious of her presence, and was listening deferentially to Miss Evershed's animated discourse; for though that young lady was apt to express herself very strongly in reprobation of the husband-hunting propensities of other girls, she was renowned as one of the most desperate flirts in the county.
Cecil found herself wondering that Hector Gordon should be there, listening to the foolish talk of a lighthearted coquette, when it was only nine or ten months since the current of his life had been overshadowed by sorrow and death. His manner was graver and more subdued than of old, it is true; but still he was there, amidst that scene of foolish gaiety, while his young wife's grave was not yet a year old.
The band-master waved his baton while Cecil was thinking this, and the band began the overture to the Bronze Horse. It was in the midst of this lively music that Hector Gordon turned and met the eyes of the woman he had once asked to be his wife. They saluted each other as ceremoniously as if they faintly remembered having met once before at a ball, or a morning concert, or somewhere. Cecil had been paler than usual from the early part of that evening, and on first seeing the Scotchman she had observed that the old warm glow of colour had vanished from his bearded face. If she fancied for a moment that he grew paler as he looked at her, it was only a foolish fancy, which she dismissed in the next instant.
"How do you do, Lady Cecil O'Boyneville?" he said, with just the faintest emphasis on the surname.
"How do you do, Major Gordon?"
Cecil would have been terribly perplexed had she been called upon to say any thing more; but amidst the brazen prancings of the Bronze Horse this was about as much as could be said.
The band-master flourished his baton in a kind of frenzy as he urged his men to the climax; the cornets and trombones blew themselves into convulsions, and with a brilliant volley of chords, short and sharp as file-firing, the crimson velvet curtains swept apart, revealing a bijou chamber which Vestris herself might have envied.
It was a boudoir hung with white satin, and furnished with chairs and sofas and tiny fragile tables of white wood, that were miracles of the upholsterer's art. On tables and cabinets there were vases of Sèvres biscuit filled with white exotics. Every thing in the gem-like chamber was white. It was the virginal nest of a Parisian aristocrate of the old régime; such a nest as one might find nowadays in the Champs Elysées or the Rue Taibout, occupied by a different tenant. The comedy was called On accorde à qui persévère, and was one of those airy fabrics which can only be constructed by the light hand of a Gallic workman.
The Comtesse de Presles is lovely, rich, aristocratic, a widow, and two-and-twenty. For her the universe is the sunniest and most delightful affair. She revels in her beauty, her wealth, her youth, her freedom: but so many charms are accompanied with certain penalties. The Countess is persecuted by the crowd of her adorers; and at last, in order to escape their importunities, in very despair she accepts the addresses of the Duc d'Auberive, a gentleman of forty years, bien sonnées, stiff, grand, all that there is of the most patrician—a man whose ancestors have made their own terms with the Kings of France—a man whose great-grandfather's arrogance would have defied the throne, had it not been strangled by the iron hand of a Richelieu.
Affianced to this gentleman, whom she respects but does not love, Léonie de Presles is tranquil. Her lovers can no longer molest her. The name of the Duc d'Auberive will serve as an ægis, before which the most presumptuous of these soupirants must retire abashed.
No, not the most presumptuous. There is the Marquis, the most utter scapegrace amongst them all. The man whose case was of all others most hopeless—le dernier des derniers; the rejected of the rejected; poor, out-at-elbows—morally, not actually, for he makes his creditors dress him handsomely in spite of themselves—dissipated, reckless; a man who has squandered an enormous fortune at lansquenet, and has lampooned the Pompadour; a man who at any moment may be consigned to the darkest underground cell in the Bastille, to finish his worthless life in the society of rats and spiders. And this man dares to pursue the lovely Countess with his insolent importunities. He dares even more. He tells her that she shall marry him. Yes; though he is poor and worthless and a scapegrace—though he has lost all his money at lansquenet—though she has affianced herself to that respectable idiot the Duke. He loves her. Is not that enough? As to the fortune he has lost—a bagatelle! For her sake he will win another fortune. As for the fury of the Pompadour—he defies the Pompadour. For Léonie's sake he will do any thing that is desperate—save the King's life when it has not been in peril; discover the details of a great political plot that has never existed; do something to win the favour of the monarch himself, in spite of the Pompadour.
It is in vain that the Countess would banish this insolent. She denies him her door—he comes in at the window. She gives her servants the most severe orders—instant dismissal for the renegade who admits the Marquis. But in spite of her the rejected wretch is perpetually at her feet. She triumphs in the thought of having outwitted him, and the next moment he is there—by her side. She sends for her milliner, and lo, her milliner is the Marquis. She orders a cup of chocolate, and the lackey who brings it is the Marquis. She summonses one of her gardeners to complain of the poverty of her exotics, and the gardener is transformed into the Marquis.
And in all this there are involved those exquisite complications, that delicious èquivoque of which Scribe was so great a master. Every moment there is some fresh situation, some new and delightful perplexity. Now the Marquis is hiding behind a screen—now dipping his powered head up and down behind an ottoman. The Duke is always being fooled more or less, and the Countess is forced into deceptions she abhors by the artifices of her impertinent suitor. And with the fabulous good luck of all these fascinating scapegraces of the Parisian drama, the Marquis triumphs over every difficulty. All that he has promised to do in jest, he is able to achieve in earnest: without effort, for the trump-cards of fortune drop into his hands. He does save the King's life, in a hunting party, almost by accident. He does discover a real political conspiracy, and again almost by accident. The King is delighted with him, the Pompadour forgives him, the forfeited lands of an ancestor are restored to him. A Jew miser who has begged of him, and whom he has assisted, dies and leaves him millions. And at last, tormented beyond all measure, the Countess yields; the Duke retires, glad to be out of a contest which is altogether unfamiliar to his stateliness, and the Marquis triumphs.
Such a piece as this seems written to be acted in a drawing-room. There is no declamation, there are no heroics. Nothing is wanted but coquettish grace in the women, ease and assurance in the men. And who can imagine any thing more delightful than Florence Lobyer in the rôle of the persecuted Countess? Such bewitching insolence of the grand dame; such fascinating hauteur; such delicious grace in refusing; such lovely tenderness in the moment of relenting. And the Pompadour dress—that most perfect of all fashions ever invented to render loveliness irresistible—that costume in which plebeian beauty loses its alloy of vulgar clay, and is sublimated into the ideal—that bewildering and bewitching attire which imparts to the snub-nose of a Dunbarry a grace unsurpassed by the classic profile of a Phryne—what of Florence Lobyer in blue brocade and old point, powder and diamonds, patches and hoop, high-heeled shoes with glittering buckles and gold-embroidered stockings? If Mr. Lobyer had chosen his wife because she was the best thing to be had in the way of wives, he had good reason to be proud of her to-night, when she flashed her beauty and her diamonds upon the dazzled eyes of his guests.
He was proud of her—after his own sullen fashion—and angry with her too; for another man shared the applause which she won, and made himself the central feature in the night's triumph. It was not of Mr. Lobyer's wealth, or the glories of Pevenshall—the oxydised silver candelabra and epergnes—the looking-glass plateau, with its border of silver bulrushes and silver stags drinking in the placid stream; it was not of the splendour of Mr. Lobyer's dinner-table, or the cost of Mr. Lobyer's modern pictures, that these people would talk when they went home. The event of the evening was the amateur acting, which the master of Pevenshall stigmatised as tomfoolery; and the triumphs of the evening belonged to Florence and Sir Nugent.
Lolling in his luxurious chair, and staring at the brilliant little stage with a moody countenance, Mr. Lobyer reflected upon many things, the thought of which was scarcely adapted to the scene in which he found himself. Ah, if at some delightful assembly where every one is looking so pleased and happy, one could take the roofs off people's brains, as Asmodeus lifted the tiles and timbers of Madrid, what strange subjects we should find our friends pondering! There would be Smith thinking of that iniquitous lawsuit, in which the villany of some pettifogging attorney has involved him; Brown calculating the amounts of renewed accommodation-bills, which must so soon be renewed again; Mrs. Jones thinking what a brute Jones has been for the last week, and how shamefully he is flirting with that brazen-faced Mrs. Smith; Thomson brooding over the gloom of the Stock Exchange, and the amount of capital he has squandered on "contango." And yet "the dalliance and the wit" go on all the while. Mrs. Brown sings one of her pretty sentimental songs—"Robin Adair," or "John Anderson my Jo"—while her feelings towards Brown are almost murderous; Smith warbles his little French chanson—all about laissons rire-er, and un beau sourire-er—and is thinking of what he should like to do to the lawyer even as he warbles. Oh sublime hypocrisies of social intercourse! Is sadde-of-mutton very often cold; salmon, whose attendant cucumber comes too late; ice-pudding, dissolving languidly on the napkin that envelopes it; are the cates and confections of a modern dinner worth so much deception? Instead of the stereotyped invitation prepared by a fashionable stationer, why do not our friends write to us, saying, "Come, let us weep and howl together; for sorrows are many, and life is bitter?"
Leaning back in his chair, and looking at the stage, where the Marquis in violet velvet and gold was coquetting with the Countess in blue brocade and diamonds, Thomas Lobyer's thoughts went back to an unforgotten time, and he saw a grassy angle, shut in by ivy-covered walls, and heard the clamorous voices of a crowd of boys. He felt a shower of blows sent home by a practised arm, the hot breath of an antagonist upon his cheek, a handsome face pressing closer and closer to his own. He felt all this; and the vengeful fury of that moment came back to him, intensified by certain feelings that had influenced him of late.
"He makes himself at home in my house," thought the millionaire. "He gives his orders to the upholsterers, I'll warrant, though they'll send their bills to me. He chooses the piece that is to be played; he secures the services of the band. And I know that he hates me, and he knows that I hate him; and yet we smirk and grin at each other, like a couple of clowns at a fair. If that knife had struck nearer home, and had done for him altogether, it couldn't have been much worse for me than it was. I dare say I should only have had a twelvemonth's imprisonment or so, and I shouldn't have had him turning up on my wedding tour, and taking possession of my house."
The comedy came to an end at last. It had seemed very long to Cecil. The German diplomatist had talked to her between the acts, and Major Gordon had talked to Miss Evershed.
After the comedy there was an adjournment to the dining-room, for a stand-up supper,—one of those suppers which admit of such ravages in stealthy middle-aged devourers, who prowl from table to table and from sideboard to buffet, sipping of one sweet and then flying to the rest; consuming unknown quantities of white soup and lobster-salad; taking now a seven-and-sixpenny peach, now a plate of plovers' eggs embedded in savoury jelly; pausing here to quaff sparkling hock, and lingering there to imbibe dry champagne. Such a supper-room affords a superb platform for flirtation; and the young ladies staying in the house, and the young lady-visitors of the evening, did considerable execution among the Plungers, recently returned from the pale beauties of Hindostan, and ready to fall victims to the rosy brightness of fresh young British belles.
Cecil saw that Hector Gordon was graver and more subdued than his brother officers; but she saw also that he talked to Miss Evershed very much as he had talked to herself in the first days of their acquaintance at Fortinbras, and that he was undisturbed by any memory of the past. She felt that she had reason to be very glad of this. Any apparent consciousness of that brief romance by the sea-shore on his part must have been unspeakably painful to her now; and yet—and yet—she felt, at the same time, that Hector Gordon's calm indifference did not give her so much pleasure as it should have done.
The close of the evening was very brilliant. The band of the Plungers adjourned to the great conservatory opening out of the drawing-room, after having supped luxuriously—so luxuriously indeed, that one of the cornet-players bungled considerably in the process of changing his keys, and was severely reprimanded by his chief. But the Pevenshall guests were too deep in flirtation and pleasure to be aware of any transient hitch in the harmony of that delicious Plunger band, which played waltzes and galops to perfection; and the effect of the red coats and glittering brazen instruments seen athwart the dusky foliage of palm and orange, citron and cactus, was picturesque in the extreme. Foremost among the waltzers were Florence in her Pompadour dress, and Sir Nugent in his violet-velvet coat and diamond-hilted rapier; and the German diplomatist watching them observed to Cecil that it was evident the baronet had learned to waltz upon the other side of the Alps. Conspicuous on account of her position as mistress of the house, doubly conspicuous because of her beauty and brilliant costume, Mrs. Lobyer could not indulge in the mildest flirtation without incurring a certain degree of observation; and her flirtation with Sir Nugent to-night was not of the mildest order. It seemed as if he could not quite put off his character of the scapegrace adorer while he still wore the dress. As he had pursued the lovely Countess in the comedy, so he pursued the bewitching Mrs. Lobyer now that the comedy was over. As Flo had coquetted in her rôle of the Countess, so she coquetted now.
Fast young squires remarked to their intimates that the pretty little woman was "going the pace." Dowagers regarded Mrs. Lobyer curiously through double eye-glasses. Even Miss Evershed shrugged her shoulders, and told her confidante of the moment that the flirtation was really becoming a little too glaring.
"I shall speak to Nugent about it to-morrow," she said; "for I think he minds me as much as he does any one; and as I know she is a good little thing, with no real harm in her, I don't like to see her make a fool of herself."
It was nearly four o'clock when the last carriage rolled away from beneath the Italian portico. It was quite four o'clock when Florence went up stairs with Cecil.
exclaimed Mrs. Lobyer, whose gaiety throughout the evening had been of a very feverish order. "Let me come to your room, Cecil. We'll have some strong tea, and talk over our evening. Do you think it has been successful?"
The two ladies were on the threshold of Cecil's room as Florence asked this question. They went into the luxurious little retreat, where the fire and candles were always burning as brightly as if they had been watched by some genius of comfort rather than by an ordinary attendant. Mrs. Lobyer rang for tea; and then, after flinging herself into one of the low chairs, pulled off her powdered wig with its superstructure of plumes and diamonds.
"Oh, how my head aches!" she exclaimed as she loosened her hair and let it fall in a shower upon her shoulders. "I wonder whether real actresses ever feel as I have felt to-night. Do you know that I had a splitting headache before dinner, and that my brain has been throbbing like a steam-engine all the evening. Just put your hand upon my head."
Cecil laid her fingers gently upon the fair young head, which was burning with fever. She brought eau-de-cologne from the adjoining room, and bathed her friend's forehead. Mrs. Lobyer's maid appeared while Cecil was doing this.
"Let us have some strong green-tea, Martin," said Flo; "and bring me a dressing-gown. I want to get rid of this horrible dress."
The maid retired to give her order, and returned almost immediately with a loose garment of white cashmere and quilted satin. She took to pieces the brilliant Pompadour toilette, the diamonds and lace and bouquets and plumes, and removed the useless litter, leaving her mistress wrapped in the dressing-gown, with her fair hair falling about her face and neck.
She lay back in her luxurious chair in a listless attitude, looking dreamily at the fire, and did not speak until some little time after the tea-service had been brought.
"You are sure that you are not sleepy, Cecil, and that I am not making myself a nuisance?" she said at last.
"Quite sure, dear. Shall I pour you out some tea?"
"If you please: only it isn't fair that you should wait upon me."
"You have so much more reason to be tired than I have."
"But I am not in the least tired," exclaimed Flo; "I am only preternaturally awake. And now tell me, Cecil, do you think my evening has been a success?"
"I think people enjoyed themselves extremely."
"That is no answer, Cecil."
"And I think you acted charmingly; indeed every one thought so; but——"
"Ah, there it is! I expected the 'but.' What is it, Cecil?"
"Am I to be candid, Flory? You know I love you very sincerely, dear; and I want our friendship to be something more than the conventional friendliness of women who praise each other's dresses and bonnets. Am I to speak without reserve?"
"Oh yes, if you please," answered Flo, with a sigh of resignation. "I have been doing something dreadful, I suppose?"
"I think you know what I am going to say as well as I do, Florence."
"Perhaps I do; but you shall say it notwithstanding. What is it?"
"You remember what we talked of this afternoon. I told you that I thought your manner with Sir Nugent Evershed was a little different from your manner with other people, and apt to invite observation on that account. I tell you frankly, Florence, that your manner and his manner to-night did attract observation, and that some of your guests spoke of you as they had no right to speak. People are very incautious in a crowded room, and one hears things that are not intended to be heard."
To Cecil's surprise her friend burst into a laugh—a clear silvery peal of laughter, which would have been charming if it had not been in such strange discord with the occasion.
"And so people have begun to talk of me?" she said. "I dare say they have talked enough of Mr. Lobyer and Miss de Raymond; and now I suppose they will talk of me and Sir Nugent Evershed."
"Florence, for Heaven's sake don't talk like that!"
"How would you have me talk? Am I to submit tamely to my wrongs? If my husband outrages me, I will outrage him. Why, those ignorant country people could give me the clue to Mr. Lobyer's indifference. They know that my husband devotes his life to another woman—and has only married me because he wants some one to sit at the head of his table who does not smoke or swear or paint herself red and white, like Miss de Raymond. He likes the smoking and the swearing and the red and white paint, you know; and I have no doubt he thinks me a horribly insipid creature; but society is not yet so advanced that he can afford to place a Miss de Raymond at the head of his table. That will come in due course."
"Florence, you must not speak of things in this way. I know, dear, that your position is a most painful one, and I can only think of one thing that you can do to lessen its misery."
"And what is that?"
"Write to your father, telling him every thing, or beg him to come to you. He is the only person you can safely trust with the secret you have so unhappily discovered."
"Secret!" cried Flo, bitterly; "a secret that is known to all the country side. No, Cecil; your advice is very good, I dare say; but it is advice that I can never act upon. I have made a mistake, but I made it with my eyes open; and I will never tell my father how miserably my folly has come home to me. He gave his consent to my marriage with such reluctance; he knew that I was selling myself for fine clothes and a splendid establishment. But I tried to deceive him—I tried to deceive myself. Modern London is a kind of Maelstrom, Cecil, and my poor foolish head was giddy with all that confusion of carriages and horses, and bric-à-brac and jewelry. Every body is so rich nowadays, and one is stifled with the wealth of other people. I had begun to think that life was intolerable without a million of money, some time before I met Mr. Lobyer. He was the first millionaire who crossed my path, and I accepted him blindly. But I thought that he asked me to be his wife because he loved me, Cecil—honestly, after his own unromantic fashion—and I meant to do my duty to him; I did indeed, Cecil."
"I believe it, darling; and you may still do your duty," answered Cecil, bending tenderly over the slight figure. Mrs. Lobyer had slipped from the low chair to the ground, and was half-sitting, half-kneeling, at her friend's feet.
"What, with a Miss de Raymond in the background? Never, Cecil! Besides, I had long given over that idea of doing my duty. Within a week of my marriage I discovered how mistaken I had been in thinking Mr. Lobyer cared for me. It was for his own glorification, the gratification of his own vanity that he married me; and I am not so much to him as his horses or his dogs, for he takes some pleasure in their society. He swore at me before our honeymoon was over, because I ventured to remonstrate with him for his brutality to a waiter who had made some mistake about the arrangements of the dinner. From that time all thought of doing my duty honestly and conscientiously, as I had meant to do it, was over. Our marriage was reduced to the level of a bargain, and I resolved to perform my part of the bargain as fairly as I could. So I dress to the best of my ability, and I receive my husband's friends, and am civil even to those Manchester people; and I fill up invitation-cards, and give the housekeeper her orders, and discuss the arrangements of the house—who is to have the blue-room, and who is to have the chintz-room, and who we may venture to put upon the second-floor, and so on. With regard to Sir Nugent Evershed, I will frankly confess that he is an unutterable relief to me after Manchester; and if I flirt with him a little now and then, I consider myself quite at liberty to do so. To-night my nerves were irritated by the rencontre of the afternoon, and I dare say I behaved very foolishly. I wanted to demonstrate my defiance of my husband. I wished to show these people—who, no doubt, know all about Miss de Raymond—I wished them to see that I was no sentimental wife devoted to an unfaithful husband."
"But, my dearest Florence, was it wise to sacrifice your own self-respect in order to gratify your pride?"
"I have no self-respect. I have never respected myself since I married Mr. Lobyer. Oh Cecil, there is nothing that has ever been written about such marriages too strong or too bitter for their iniquity. We sell ourselves like slaves, and when the bargain is completed, we hate the master who has bought us. Don't kiss me, Cecil. I am not worthy that any good woman's lips should touch mine. I have sold myself to a man whom I despised before I hated him; and now that it is too late I repent of my wickedness."
"But if Mr. Lobyer outrages you by association with such a woman as that person we saw to-day, you may be released from this unhappy union. You have only to appeal to your father, Florence; surely he can help you."
"Yes, he can take me back to the Fountains, to be the laughing-stock of every body who ever knew me before my marriage. Ah, how the manœuvring mothers and husband-hunting daughters would triumph if they could discover that my brilliant match had ended in failure and misery! No, Cecil, I must abide by the bargain I have made for myself; and, after all, I cannot complain that I am cheated. I sold myself for diamonds, and carriages, and horses, and servants; and Mr. Lobyer has given them to me. I told you it would be a bad thing for me when I came to talk seriously of things. I must take life lightly, Cecil, like other women who marry for money And now parlons toilette; tell me how you like my dress to-night. Is that blue a good candle-light colour? I had awful doubts on the subject. If there were any green tinges in it, I must have looked hideous."
After this Cecil tried in vain to bring her friend back to any thing like serious conversation. Mrs. Lobyer chattered as gaily as if no sorrow had ever shadowed her life, and the dim winter daylight glimmered coldly behind the rose-tinted curtains before Cecil could induce her to retire. They separated at last, however, after kissing each other affectionately: and Florence Lobyer's grand field-night came to a close.
After the amateur theatricals, there was a little lull at Pevenshall. Mrs. Lobyer kept her room for a day or two, attended constantly by Lady Cecil O'Boyneville. Medical wisdom pronounced that she had over fatigued herself, and ordered extreme quiet. But to endure such a regimen as the doctor prescribed for more than eight and forty hours was quite beyond Florence's patience. On the evening of the second day she reappeared in the drawing-room, paler than usual, and all the more fascinating by reason of that delicate pallor.
Pevenshall was besieged by callers during that particular week—people who had been so delighted, and so charmed, and so surprised by the amateur comedy, and who were eager to testify their gratification and their delight to the mistress of the mansion. Amongst these callers were the officers of the Plungers, and amongst the officers came Major Gordon.
He came one bright frosty morning, when a bevy of ladies, headed by Miss Evershed, had sailed off to the billiard-room, and when the group in the drawing-room was a very small one. The sentimental widow sat by the fire reading a new French novel—the philosophy of which she took the trouble to expound now and then for the benefit of her companions; an elderly dowager dozed over the morning paper; Mrs. Lobyer sat at a little table by one of the windows, trifling with her brushes, before a half-finished water-colour sketch of a group of camellia japonicas that had been brought from the conservatory for the gratification of a sudden artistic impulse on the part of the mistress of Pevenshall; and Cecil bent over an elaborately embroidered slipper which she was preparing for the great O'Boyneville.
"I think it would be rather nice if I could only get a bird's-nest," said Flo, after a lengthened contemplation of her sketch; "'Camellia Japonicas and a Bird's Nest—Mrs. Lobyer.' That would look very well in a catalogue, wouldn't it? But I suppose bird's-nests are out of season in January. People talk about money being able to buy any thing, and yet I dare say my picture will be a failure for want of a bird's-nest. Camellia japonicas by themselves are so uninteresting; and I did so want to astonish papa by sending something to the British Institution, just to show him that I hadn't neglected my painting. What do you think of a cut lemon, Cecil? one of those big clumsy lemons one sees in old pictures, with the rind trailing from it. Or what would you say to a silver salver, or one of Mr. Lobyer's great chased tankards, or a Sèvres vase? I positively must have something to relieve the insipidity of my camellia japonicas."
While Mrs. Lobyer was debating this important subject, Major Gordon was announced. Cecil and Florence were seated very near each other; and after shaking hands with both ladies, the soldier took the chair nearest his hostess.
Then for the first time Cecil felt the extreme embarrassment of her position. The man who had once loved her approached her as a stranger, and yet, in spite of her prayers—in spite of her struggles to hold firmly to the right, the vision of the past came back to her; and she thought of him, not as she saw him now, courteously indifferent, conventionally polite—but as she had seen him on that last day at Fortinbras, with his head bent, and his eyes dim with tears.
But with him it was otherwise, thought Cecil. Surely if any recollection of that time had been present to his mind, he could not have seemed so entirely at his ease. He inquired about his aunt. He had not seen her since his return to England, and he was very anxious to see her, dear soul, he said. She was visiting, of course, always visiting at this time of year. He had received delightful letters from her, and invitations to some of the houses at which she was staying.
"If I can get away from Chiverley for a week, I shall run over to Thornley Grange, in Leicestershire, where she is to be in March," he said; "but at the worst I shall see her in town I suppose early in the spring."
This last remark seemed to require an answer, so Cecil replied that she had no doubt Mrs. MacClaverhouse would return to Dorset Square in the spring.
And after this the conversation became general. Florence told Major Gordon her difficulties with regard to the camellia japonicas.
"They will come out so stiffly," she said despondingly; "no one but a Miss Mutrie or a Van Huysum could make any thing out of them."
Mr. Lobyer came in from a morning's ride while the Scotchman was talking to the two ladies, and on this particular occasion Mr. Lobyer happened to be in very good humour with himself and the world in general. The Chili Island loan, in which he was vitally interested, was beginning to look up in the market, after having been for some time in bad odour; and the influence of a rapid advance of seven-eighths brightened the millionaire's countenance. He made himself as agreeable as it was in him to be, and invited the Major to dinner the next day, when some "other fellows" were coming from Manchester.
The Major hesitated just a little before he accepted the invitation, and it seemed to Mrs. Lobyer that he glanced towards Cecil in that moment of hesitation; but he did accept it.
"Why, Cecil, you never told me that Major Gordon was related to you," said Flo when that gentleman had departed.
"He is not related to me. My aunt, Mrs. MacClaverhouse, is only his aunt-in-law; there is no real relationship even between Major Gordon and her whatever; there is no relationship between him and me."
"Indeed! But you did not even tell me that you knew him. How very nice he is—and a young widower! I think there is nothing so interesting as a young widower. One generally associates a widower with baldness, and stoutness, and half-a-dozen children in rusty mourning: but a young widower is delightful: and he is, or is to be, very rich, is he not? Mr. Lobyer says so, and he keeps a kind of mental register of other people's banking accounts. I wish there were no such person as Mr. O'Boyneville."
"Florence!"
"Oh, I don't mean any unkindness towards him. But if you were only single, it would be so nice to make a match between you and the Major. Match-making is the natural occupation of a married woman, and I want an eligible couple to operate upon. Depend upon it, Mrs. Vancourt will set her cap at our Major."
This was said sotto voce, for Mrs. Vancourt was the sentimental widow.
The lady in question looked up from her book five minutes afterwards to expatiate upon a passage thereof.
"Is not this true?" she said. "How well this man knows the human heart! 'Il n'y a jamais d'oubli où il y a eu de l'amour. Durant l'absence on croit toujours oublier, et on se trompe toujours. Mais lorsqu'on revoit celle qu'on a aimée, les années passées s'envolent comme le songe d'une nuit d'été, et on s'aperçoit qu'on n'a jamais cessé d'aimer.'"
A faint blush spread itself over Cecil O'Boyneville's face as the widow finished her lecture; for there seemed to her some grain of truth amidst the French romancer's flimsy sentimentality.