no great measure of persuasion was needed on the part of sir gilbert clare in order to induce lady pell to extend the term of her visit at withington chase.
sooth to lay, age was beginning to tell somewhat upon her ladyship. with advancing years her craving to be continually on the move from place to place began to work less powerfully within her. there were even times when a growing sense of loneliness made itself sadly felt, and when the knowledge that she was both childless and homeless would unseal in her heart a fountain of poignant regrets which would well to her eyes in tears, all the more salt, it may be, in that they were, as a rule, so sternly repressed.
somehow the chase seemed more of a home to her than any place she had visited for years. there was a sweet nameless charm about the old mansion which affected her--she could hardly have told how. even when she had been a month there she felt no desire to pack up her trunks and betake herself elsewhere. this, for her, was an altogether novel experience.
it may be that lady pell's liking for the chase was due in part, if not wholly, to her recollection of a certain happy season she had spent there when in her teens. it had been the scene of the first and, possibly, the only romance her life had known--a poor little futile romance, as events had proved--but perhaps none the less cherished on that account; and it was still the home of the man who had been the ideal of her girlish dreams.
sir gilbert, for his part, was well satisfied that his cousin should make the chase her home for as long as it might suit her convenience to do so. that he would feel her departure as a loss whenever it should take place, he began to realise more clearly the longer she stayed. she was capital company; never otherwise than lively and in good spirits, not a bit in awe of him, and imbued with a sufficiency of the combative element to make her always ready to administer that pinch of contradiction which men like the baronet need to put them on their mettle.
without any design or set intention on her part, ethel had become a great favourite with the old man. as we know, the baronet had had several sons, but no daughter, and all unwittingly ethel had slipped into a vacant niche in his heart, of the existence of which he had heretofore been only dimly aware. in ethel's singing and playing he found something that pleased him exceedingly. and when in some neglected corner she found a heap of old music which had belonged to, and bore the signature of, the first lady clare; and when, one evening, without saying anything to him, she ventured to play some of them; and, when he recognised them--voices from the tomb, as it were, silent for thirty long years--his delight was touching to behold. after that ethel played and sang to him every evening, when he would sit with closed eyes, an elbow resting on either arm of his big easy-chair, and the fingertips of one hand pressed against those of the other, while an expression of great peace and contentment would gradually steal over his grand old features.
"i can't tell what it is, louisa, that draws me so to that girl," he remarked one day to lady pell. "it's not her good looks, though they are undeniable; and it's not her musical abilities, admirable as they are; it's a charm, a something altogether indefinable and elusive, to which, if i were to try for an hour, i don't think i could give its proper name. both her eyes and her voice seem to haunt me; it is as if i had seen the one and heard the other in some prior state of existence. at times they affect me in the strangest possible way."
"i don't wonder at your being taken by ethel thursby," returned lady pell. "she is a dear girl, and i should like to have kept her with me always; but her aunts would only lend her to me for a time. in one sense i shall be quite sorry when beilby, my ordinary companion, is well enough to resume her duties."
"you must not let her go yet awhile, louisa. and yet, the longer she stays, the harder it will seem to part from her when the time comes."
"there is some one besides you and me, unless i am very much mistaken, who will find it harder still to part from her when the time comes."
"and who may that be, pray?"
"that very nice secretary of yours, mr. everard lisle."
"lisle! you don't mean to say----"
"i mean to say that he's over head and ears in love with ethel thursby."
"you astonish me. i have remarked nothing."
"of course not. it was not to be expected. you are only a poor purblind man. now, i have been sure of it for some time; indeed, i began to have my suspicions almost from the first time they met. i confess that i watch the progress of the little comedy, out of a corner of my eye, with a good deal of interest. i like to see a man in earnest, and that's what young lisle evidently is."
"he's a fine fellow, and i wish--it seems a hard thing to say--that my grandson were more like him."
"well, well, gilbert, you must just accept lewis as he is, and make the best of him. i am afraid it would not be well for us if we could have people manufactured to our own liking. but, when all is said, i am not without hope that your grandson will ultimately prove to be everything that you could desire."
they were still talking when a black-bordered letter, which had just arrived, was brought to sir gilbert.
"it is from my daughter-in-law, mrs. clare," he said as he examined the postmarks before opening it. "from the mourning envelope, i judge that her venerable relative is dead."
and such, indeed, proved to be the case. giovanna wrote to say that her grandmother was no more, and that in the course of a few days she hoped to be on her way back to england. she had written twice to sir gilbert previously, just a few formal lines couched in studiously respectful terms, her first note containing the announcement of her arrival at catanzaro, and her second conveying the news that her grandmother still lingered, but that all hope of her recovery had been given up. brief and simple though the notes were, the composition of them had been anything but a labour of love to giovanna. she had expended both time and pains over them, and, after all, had been far from satisfied with the result.
sir gilbert, however, had giovanna but known it, was quite satisfied. to him his daughter-in-law's brief formal communications seemed everything that the occasion demanded. he often thought about her, but never unkindly, and he looked forward to her proximate return with a certain amount of pleasure. he had begun to regard her as an agreeable element in the subdued tenour of his existence; and although lady pell far more than compensated for her absence, his cousin would not stay at the chase for ever, indeed, she might take it into her head to start off at any moment, and when her ladyship should be gone giovanna would step back into the place which for a little while she had unavoidably vacated.
he now gave mrs. clare's note to lady pell to read.
"i suppose we may expect her back in about a week or ten days," he presently remarked. "it will gratify me to introduce her to you. i think you will be pleased with her."
lady pell's sole reply was a little dubious cough. liberal-minded though she was in many ways--indeed, she prided herself on being so--she was not, as a rule, prepossessed by foreigners. it was an insular prejudice, but one, unfortunately, which she shared in common with numbers of worthy people, who take credit to themselves for their narrow-mindedness, and are proud of boasting that they are "english to the backbone."
"her mother was an englishwoman, as i think i have mentioned to you before to-day," remarked sir gilbert with a little flash of the eye. "consequently----"
"mrs. clare is only half a foreigner. it is a fact i had forgotten. yes, that certainly makes a difference, and i at once admit that i am a little curious to meet her. being the sort of woman you have described to me--still, for all her forty years, or whatever their number may be, so splendidly handsome--you have not, i presume, overlooked the possibility of her one day marrying again."
the baronet threw a startled glance at his cousin. "no," he exclaimed, "such an idea never entered my mind."
"i can well believe it," rejoined lady pell with a little pitying smile. "you men!--you men! but now that i have made you a present of the idea, you cannot fail to perceive the extreme feasibility of it."
"um-um. but if mrs. clare had any thought or intention of marrying again, why need she have waited all these years? like the rest of us, louisa, she is not growing younger."
"possibly she has met no one whom she cared to marry. but, be that as it may, it must at once strike you that the mrs. clare of to-day--the daughter-in-law of sir gilbert clare and the mother of the prospective heir of withington chase--is a very different personage in the matrimonial market from the mrs. clare of six months ago. if she prove anything like the kind of woman i take her to be, you may rely upon it that she will not long be content to remain buried in a little poky neighbourhood such as this. she will want--and very naturally--to see something of the world, and to assume that position in society to which by your own act she has become entitled." then, perceiving that her words had had more effect than she had intended, she hastened to add: "but these are merely some of my views, and must not be taken for more than they are worth. it may be that i shall find mrs. clare a very different kind of person from anything i have imagined her to be."
sir gilbert rose stiffly from his chair.
"what you have just told me, louisa, has put me about a little, and i have no wish to deny it. there is reason in what you say--much reason. for, when all is said, why should not alec's widow marry again if her inclination tends that way? only, i hadn't thought of it--that's where it is--i hadn't thought of it."
a happy accident--if that may be termed an accident which was the result of the working out of a series of events altogether outside their own control--had brought lisle and ethel together again, but neither of them felt inclined to cavil at having been thus unceremoniously treated. neither did they evince any disposition to grumble when they found that a day seldom passed without bringing them for a longer or shorter time into the society of each other. everard was at the chase nearly every forenoon, and frequently stayed for luncheon, while his invitations to dinner were even more frequent since lady pell's arrival than they had been before. the latter fact he owed to his ability as a whist-player, for sir gilbert, to his great satisfaction, now found that, with mrs. tew to make a fourth, he could count upon a rubber as often as he chose to bring the little party together, which, on an average, was three or four evenings a week. it was a pleasure from which circumstances had long debarred him.
everard's love for ethel, which her refusal of him had compelled him to crush down with all the force of his will, but which nothing had availed to kill, under the daily sunshine of her presence sprang up into fresh and vigorous life. to all outward seeming, as he flattered himself, his treatment of her in no wise differed from that which he would have accorded to any other young woman with whom circumstances might have brought him into daily contact; but on that point, as we have seen, he was mistaken, lady pell having penetrated his secret almost from the first. he strove to so train both his voice and his eyes that neither of them should betray him, and believed--foolish fellow!--that he had succeeded in the attempt. he had no present intention of risking his fate a second time. just now it was happiness enough to be enabled to see ethel and to talk with her day after day, to sit by her at table, to hover round her at the piano, and to be permitted to hold her fingers for a moment within his when the time came for bidding her goodnight. once again his tongue should bear witness for him--and he would stand or fall by the result: but not yet.
and ethel--what of her?
she would not have been a woman had she not known that lisle loved her. if lady pell could penetrate his secret, it was scarcely to be expected that she who was alone concerned should be less clear-sighted, lacking though she was both in years and experience.
with ethel, although she did not know it, it was love that whispered love's secret to her heart. she heard the whisper but failed to recognise the voice. only a little while before she had been sorely smitten, and not yet had she quite recovered from the blow; although every day that took her farther away from it helped almost imperceptibly to blunt the sharp edge of pain. a consciousness had begun to dawn on her that within her heart, dormant as yet, or only just beginning timidly to unfold, lay the potentialities of a love very different from that which her ignorance had been beguiled into accepting as the "perfect flower of life." already for her the morn of a new and more beautiful love was beginning to break, before the sweetness and light of which all that was left in her memory of the deposed image of launce keymer would fade and crumble into nothingness.
