A SECOND SUMMONS.
“Se non e vero, e ben trovato.”
Italian Saying.
“All the land. . . .
Smelt of the coming summer, as one large cloud
Drew downward; but all else of heaven was pure
Up to the sun, and May from verge to verge,
And May with me from head to heel.”
The Gardener’s Daughter.
A FEW weeks past, and with the exception of a note from old Dr. Farmer, thanking him in Colonel Methvyn’s name for his readiness in obeying the summons, Mr. Guildford heard no more of the family at Greystone. Sometimes he could almost have fancied the whole occurrence a dream.
The weather grew steadily milder: some of the Sothernbay invalids began to talk of going home; others improved enough to be a good deal cheerier than they had been; a few, too far gone to be recalled by even the balmiest air and brightest sun shine, died. Mr. Guildford was used to sad sights, yet not so used to them as to be insensible to the ever-varying individual sadness of each; but among the many phases of sorrow and suffering he had witnessed during this last winter, no scene had left a stronger impression upon him than that of the death of the little boy at Greystone Abbey. He had come upon it so suddenly and unexpectedly; it seemed peculiarly sad that the little fellow was so far away from his parents, that weeks must pass before they could even know of their loss. He could not forget the anguish in the young aunt’s voice when she had exclaimed, “to-morrow, oh! to-morrow, I must write to tell Amy.” He often thought about her, and always with pity and interest. But few things seemed more unlikely than his ever learning more of Miss Methvyn or her family.
Two months after the February night of his fruitless journey to Haverstock, Mr. Guildford was surprised at receiving another letter from old Dr. Farmer, expressing a great wish to see him on as early a day as he could conveniently name. Dr. Farmer wrote of himself as in bad health, and on the eve of leaving home for some months. He offered to meet Mr. Guildford at Sothernbay if necessary, but at the same time showed plainly that he would be glad to be spared the journey. Mr. Guildford was not very busy, the “slack season” for Sothernbay was beginning; he wrote therefore to Dr. Farmer expressing his readiness to meet him at the old doctor’s own house at Greybridge, wondering a little as he did so what he could be wanted for this time, and feeling some curiosity as to whether the summons was again connected with the family at Greystone Abbey.
It proved to be so.
“Bessie,” said Mr. Guildford to his sister the evening after he had been over at Greybridge to see Dr. Farmer, “you are always wanting me to have a change. I am thinking of arranging to have one every week.”
“What do you mean, Edmond?” said Mrs. Crichton. “A change that came every week wouldn’t be a change. You might as well say Sunday was a change.”
“So it is—to me at least. That is to say, when I can go to church. I like going to church very much. One can think so comfortably, with such perfect security from interruption; that’s a very pleasant change to me,” said Mr. Guildford.
“Is that all you go to church for?” said Bessie with mild reproach. “And you used to be such a good little boy! I remember the first time you went to church, how still you sat, and how everybody praised you when we came out.”
“Well, I don’t jump about now, do I?” said Mr. Guildford. “I don’t see why I should never be praised now as well as when I was a little boy. Why don’t you praise me, Bessie? It’s very nice to be praised; and it’s far harder to be good when one’s big than when one’s little. You should remember that, Bessie, and encourage me sometimes. You know I do everything you tell me, don’t I?”
But Mrs. Crichton knitted on perseveringly, counting the stitches in a low voice, and taking no notice of her brother’s remarks. She was not fond of being made fun of, and when Edmond talked in this half-lazy, half-bantering way, she waxed suspicious.
“One, two, three, four, take two together,” she murmured. “These socks are for you, Edmond,” she observed, in a “coals of-fire-on-your-head” tone.
“Are they? It’s very good of you to make them for me, but I hope they are not of that prickly wool, Bessie. Some you knitted for me, made me feel as if little needles were running into my feet. Did you knit my socks for me when I was a little boy? If you did, I expect they were of soft wool then; weren’t they?”
Mrs. Crichton tried to go on knitting gravely, but her brother, standing behind her, managed to give every now and then judicious little jogs to her elbows, which much interfered with the progress of the socks. At first, Mrs. Crichton thought the jogs were accidental, and bore them philosophically enough, with a “Take care, Edmond,” or, “Please don’t shake my chair.” But a more energetic jog than usual exhausted her patience.
“Edmond, you are really too bad,” she exclaimed, “I believe you are shaking me on purpose. Just look now, I have dropped two stitches! What is the matter with you, you great, idle boy? Who would think you were a learned man, a solemn, wise doctor?”
She let her knitting fall on her lap, and turning round her pleasant face, looked up at him with fond pride shining out of her eyes. She was only ten years his senior, but her affection for him was almost motherly—she had been the only mother he had known, and no child of her own had ever interfered with her love for her early orphaned little brother.
“What are you looking at me for, Bessie?” he asked.
“I was wondering if you are handsome. I mean if any one else would think you so,” she said naïvely.
Mr. Guildford laughed. “I don’t suppose anybody but you ever thought about it,” he said carelessly.
“Your wife will,” said Bessie. And as she said so, she thought to herself that this shadowy personage would be hard to please were she other than proud of her husband. The bare possibility of her not being so, gave Bessie a momentary grudge at her imaginary sister-in-law. Yet Mr. Guildford was not handsome, not even interestingly ugly, which often serves the purpose just as well. He was well made and well proportioned; he was neither very tall nor very short, he had no striking peculiarity of appearance of any kind. But the grave face could look sunny enough sometimes, the keen grey eyes could soften into sympathy and tenderness, the dark brown hair seemed still to have some of the brightness of boyhood about it—he looked like a man for whom the best things of life were yet to come; whose full powers were fresh and unexhausted. There was plenty of strength in the face; strength which the future might possibly harden into inflexibility; strength which already faintly threatened to destroy some of the finer touches of the young man’s character, by concentrating itself into too narrow a channel, too great independence of external sympathy.
“Leave off knitting for a minute or two, Bessie,” said Mr. Guildford. “I want to tell you of rather an unusual proposal I have had made to me to-day. Do you know where I have been, by the bye?”
“Of course not. You never tell me where you are going, and you don’t suppose I ask Sims, do you?” said Mrs. Crichton virtuously. “Where have you been?”
“Do you remember my being sent for a few weeks ago by a family I had never heard of—a family living near Haverstock?” inquired her brother.
“Where the little boy died?” said Bessie, with more interest. “Oh! yes, I remember. Have they sent for you again?”
“Not exactly. But I have been asked if I would undertake to visit there regularly for the next few months. The father—Colonel Methvyn—is an invalid, and this old Dr. Farmer, who has looked after him for years, is going away for some months; he is ill himself, and is anxious to make some comfortable arrangement for Colonel Methvyn. So he thought of me, knowing the summer was not my busy time. I shall have to go to Greystone, once a week, for some months to come. Don’t you think it will be a nice change for me, Bessie? perhaps they will ask me to stay to dinner sometimes.”
Mrs. Crichton looked up doubtfully.
“Are you in fun, Edmond?” she asked. “I should not have thought it the sort of thing you would like to undertake. You like to be so independent, and I dare say this Colonel Methvyn is a disagreeable, stuck-up old man, who would quite look down upon a Sothernbay doctor.”
“I don’t care. If he does what I tell him, I’m quite willing to do my best for him. If he doesn’t, I should give it up,” said Mr. Guildford carelessly. “Still you are right, Bessie, in a sense. It isn’t the sort of thing I generally care about at all. I don’t quite know what made me agree to it.”
His face grew graver; he seemed to be revolving some question in his own mind. “It will be nice to be forced into the country every week during the summer,” he said lightly. “I fancy that was partly the reason I undertook it. I don’t fancy Colonel Methvyn is what you call a ‘stuck-up’ old man. He really suffers a great deal, Farmer tells me, and bears it very well. He was a strong, active man not many years ago, but he had a very bad fall in the hunting-field, and has never recovered it, and never will. He doesn’t require much doctoring, but Mrs. Methvyn gets nervous about him, and so on the whole it is better that some one should see him regularly. Farmer says it seems to cheer him too. He takes great interest in all that is going on. Till this year he has been well enough to go to town for two or three months with his wife and daughter; but he seems to have failed lately—the little boy’s death affected him a good deal.”
“Was the little boy his son?” asked Bessie.
“Oh! no; his grandson. So you won’t mind my leaving you once a week, Bessie, for an evening? Sometimes I may have to stay all night if I go by the late train.”
“It won’t matter much to me, Edmond,” said Mrs. Crichton regretfully. “I must really go home in a fortnight. I dare say it will be a good thing for you to leave Sothernbay for a little, if it is only for a few hours. You know I am always telling you, Edmond, that you will grow into an old bachelor before you know what you are about. You never see any one but your patients. I believe it is years since you have gone out to dinner even. I shall be very glad for you to make acquaintance with some people out of Sothernbay if they treat you properly.”
“I shall not require and I don’t intend to ‘make acquaintance’ with any of the family except my patient, Colonel Methvyn,” said Mr. Guildford with slight haughtiness, half repenting his unusual communicativeness to his sister. “I am the last man on earth to make a social stepping-stone of my profession, or to wish to have any relations except professional ones with people out of my own sphere. You might know that, Bessie, I should think.”
Mrs. Crichton looked hurt. “You need not take me up so, Edmond,” she said rather pettishly. “I don’t understand what you mean about sociable stepping-stones; you use such odd expressions. As for people being out of your own sphere, I know what that means, but I think you are very foolish. You don’t mean to say that you haven’t every right to call yourself a gentleman? You will be saying next I am not a lady.”
“‘Gentleman and lady’ are wide words nowadays,” began Mr. Guildford teasingly, but seeing that his sister looked really annoyed, he changed his tone. “Don’t be vexed, Bessie,” he said coaxingly; “I think I am pretty reasonable on these points really. I am afraid it is true that I am growing rather bearish. I wish you would come and live with me altogether and civilize me.”
“I can’t dear, you know I can’t,” replied Bessie, mollified instantly. “You know I promised Mr. Crichton that I would live at Hazel Bank most of the year and keep everything as he liked it, and it’s only right, (when you remember how very handsomely he provided for me), that his sisters should have the pleasure of coming there often.”
“Yes, I know. You’re quite right,” said Edmond. Then he fell into a brown study for some minutes. He was lying on the sofa with his hands clasped above his head. “How like he is just now to what he was when he was a boy!” thought Bessie as she glanced at him. Suddenly he spoke.
“I shall be driven to marry, I believe,” he said. “It’s so uncomfortable when you go away, Bessie. I like the feeling of a woman about the house, I think. I believe you come and go on purpose to make me miss you. I can’t think why you want me to marry. Most sisters would set themselves against it.”
“It’s very silly of them then,” said Bessie sagely. “If you marry somebody nice, and I don’t think you would marry anybody not nice, I should be far more comfortable about you.”
“Well, we’ll see,” said Mr. Guildford. And then he took up a book, and Mrs. Crichton’s attention was again absorbed in her knitting.
A few days later Mr. Guildford paid his second visit to Greystone Abbey. He had intended going there early in the day, but found it impossible to do so. It was not till between five and six in the afternoon that he found himself getting out of the train at Greybridge station.
Colonel Methvyn’s carriage was to meet him by this train—had he come by an earlier one, he intended to have walked to the Abbey—but it had not yet made its appearance. Mr. Guildford set off along the road to meet it.
It was spring now, late spring, all but May. After the severe winter, spring had come with even more than its usual sweetness and radiance. April seemed eager to welcome May; there was a glow and promise everywhere; a sound of cheery bustle and preparation among the leaves, a whisper of rejoicing in the “sweet breathing of the fields,” in the “kisses of the daisies.” For once in a way Mr. Guildford yielded to the soft sensuous enjoyment of the moment; he strolled along the pretty country road where the dear primroses were nestling in the hedges, and the coyer violets too, all but hidden in their leaves; he listened, dreamily to the pretty country sounds, the ever-distant plaintive “cuck-coo,” the near at-hand homely clucking of a matronly hen and her brood, the barking of dogs, the creaking of a mill-wheel, the voices of little children at play, all mingled into a pleasant whole of living, peaceful happiness. For once in a way, the young man yielded to the impression that sometimes in the pauses of a busy life, we are tempted to accept as the interpretation of the dream, that after all the world is a happy place, that life is a good and pleasant thing, that to enjoy and not to suffer is the rule! And a new sort of hopefulness and expectation seemed to thrill through his whole being. Ever afterwards that evening stroll—that bit of commonplace country road—seemed to him to have been an actual realisation of the spirit of the spring; to have contained a breath of the very essence of youth and hope and promise. He did not ask himself why these feelings seemed so suddenly strong within him; he fancied it only the influence of the fresh, pure air, and pleasant sights and sounds. He would not have owned to himself, he did not even suspect the curious eagerness, the more than interest with which he had for some days looked forward to his visit to Greystone Abbey. He did not know till the light of the future shone back upon the past how already a sweet, grave woman’s face had begun to change the world to him, to infuse fresh meaning into the flowers and the sunshine, to set to new music the songs of the birds.
Before he had reached the bend where the road, hitherto little more than lane, grew into wider, unshaded highway, Colonel Methvyn’s carriage met him. It was a phaeton this time, and the driver was not Mr. Guildford’s old acquaintance.
The drive in the pleasant evening air along the smooth, well-kept high-road, was very different from his last approach to Greystone, and when they reached the Abbey, by a different entrance from the gate on the Haverstock Road, Mr. Guildford hardly recognised the place as the same. It was picturesque certainly, as he had expected, but more homely, less imposing, and venerable than his imagination, from the little he had seen of it, had unconsciously pictured it. The hall, which was as lofty as the two stories of the rest of the house, and the wide porch with its quaint stone seats, were the only remains of the original building; the rest had been added at various later dates, some half-ruined walls and outbuildings having been restored and taken into the plan of the house. The walls, both new and old however, were well grown over with ivy, so that no incongruity was visible at first sight, and the effect of the whole was harmonious and pleasing.
Inside, the hall looked scarcely less attractive in the softly fading light of the April evening, than when Mr. Guildford had last seen it in the ruddy blaze of the great log fire. But the servant who had opened the door led him quickly across the long passage he remembered, into a smaller hall with a wide low window at one end, and doors at two sides, one of which he opened and ushered the new-comer into a sort of half-library, half-morning room. It was a pretty room, long and low, with windows down to the ground, opening into a little flower-garden, gay already with crocuses and tulips. Mr. Guildford, seeing no one, crossed the room and stood looking out at the flower-beds. But in a moment a faint rustle at the other end of the library told him that he had been mistaken in imagining it unoccupied; in the furthest off corner a lady was sitting at a little table writing. Apparently she had not heard him come in, but now she looked up suddenly and saw him. For a quarter of an instant, before he was conscious of anything but a slight figure in a grey dress, Mr. Guildford imagined the face, when it looked up, would be Miss Methvyn’s. But he was quickly undeceived. Half mechanically he had made a step or two forward, and seeing this the lady rose from her seat and did the same; then stood before him with a pretty sort of bewilderment.
“I beg your pardon,” he began, resorting to the Englishman’s invariable relief in awkward positions. “I quite thought you were Miss Methvyn. I did not see any one in the room when I came in.”
Long before he had finished the sentence, he had acknowledged to himself that the person before him was the loveliest girl he had ever seen. She was not tall; perhaps her extreme gracefulness made her appear smaller than she really was, or rather made one forget to think about her height at all. She was very simply dressed; but it was a simplicity productive of great results. No dress could have shown her figure to more advantage than the soft slate coloured stuff on the plain make of which apparently no thought had been bestowed; no colour could have better contrasted with the clear, marble-like complexion, rich dark hair and softly brilliant eyes, than this unobtrusive neutral tint; and when, looking up in response to Mr. Guildford’s slightly clumsy apology, the bright colour rose in her cheeks, the effect was complete.
“I am so sorry,” she said very timidly. “I did not know that any one would be coming. I fear I am in the way. Miss Methvyn perhaps does not know that Monsieur is—that you are here. Can I tell her?”
She spoke with a sort of appealing childishness, and her foreign accent was quite perceptible. “Who can she be?” was Mr. Guildford’s first thought. And “She evidently does not know who I am,” was his second.
“Oh! no, thank you. I should apologise for disturbing you,” he began. “It is not Miss Methvyn I have come to see,” he went on, feeling himself somehow stiff and awkward. “I am waiting to see Colonel Methvyn. I have come from Sothernbay,—instead of Dr. Farmer,” he added, seeing she still looked perplexed.
“Doctore Farmère,” she repeated. Then a light seemed to break upon her. “Ah! but I am stupid;” she exclaimed, a merry smile dimpling over her face. “You are then Monsieur the doctor! I did not know. All is still strange to me. There are so few days since I left the house—the home! And here in England all is so different. No longer the dear mamma to direct me. I fear monsieur will have thought me strange, unpolite—to have interrupted him.”
Again the vivid red dyed her cheeks, and at the mention of “the dear mamma,” tears, real tears stood in her eyes.
“Poor little thing; what a mere child she is!” thought Mr. Guildford. But aloud he only said kindly, “I think, mademoiselle,” (the word came instinctively) “it was I, not you, that was guilty of interrupting. Pray do not—”
But at that moment the door, near to which they were standing, opened, and Cicely came in. They both turned. When she saw them, a slight, the very slightest expression of surprise crossed Miss Methvyn’s face, but she came forward quickly, and shook hands with Mr. Guildford without a moment’s hesitation.
“I fear I have kept you waiting,” she said simply; “my father wished me to take you to see him, as—as I have seen you before—a new face makes him a little nervous sometimes—and I had one or two letters to finish for the post.”
Mr. Guildford looked at her as she spoke. Yes, there was the same fair, grave face, looking fairer and graver even from the effect of the heavy black mourning dress, the same quiet eyes looking straight up into his as she spoke, the same thick coils of hair with golden lights upon it now, as she stood with the evening sun full upon her. The same, yet different. She seemed older than when he had seen her before; he could almost have fancied his former impression of her girlishness of face and manner to have been mistaken. There was perfect self possession now in every tone and look. Mr. Guildford felt it to be in a sense infectious. He answered in the same matter-of-fact, business-like way.
“Thank you. I am quite ready to see Colonel Methvyn whenever it suits you. At the same time it is not of the least consequence to me if I wait a little. I arranged to return by a late train, as I was not able to come early.”
“I am glad of that. It was very considerate of you to arrange that your first visit should not be a hurried one,” said Miss Methvyn with the slightly formal courtesy of manner that Mr. Guildford began to understand as being habitual with her. Then turning to the young lady in the grey dress, who still stood with an air of half hesitation beside them, “Geneviève, are your letters ready? It is very nearly post time, dear.”
She spoke kindly, but with the tone of an older person to one many years younger. And there was a pretty air of half apology in the French girl’s reply.
“Oh! thank you. I go to finish them at once. It was only that I was not quite sure if monsieur,” with a glance in Mr. Guildford’s direction, “if this gentleman had been announced. I was going to seek you, my cousin.”
Cicely smiled. She fancied Geneviève had started up in affright, at finding herself tête-à-tête with the stranger. She knew that her cousin had been brought up very secludedly; perhaps, too, she unconsciously associated the idea of almost conventual restraint with every French girl’s education, and she was prepared to make full allowance for Geneviève’s inexperience, and timidity.
“You must let me introduce you to each other, I think,” said Miss Methvyn. “Geneviève, this is Mr. Guildford, who has kindly agreed to come all the way from Sothernbay to see my father in Dr. Farmer’s absence. My cousin, Miss Casalis,” she continued, turning to Mr. Guildford, “has come a very long way to see all of us. We intend to make her very fond of England to turn her into an Englishwoman, don’t we, Geneviève?”
Geneviève smiled sweetly, but rather sadly.
“You are very good for me, my cousin,” she said, “but one must love one’s country, one’s home—le foyer paternel,—above all when one has quitted them for the first time,” and she sighed gently.
It was curious how very French she had become since finding herself in England.
Cicely looked at her kindly. “Of course,” she said cheerfully, “of course, you must feel a little home-sick at first.”
Mr. Guildford said nothing, but he fancied Miss Methvyn treated the matter rather cavalierly. An English girl’s sentimentality would have annoyed him, but this poor little thing!—He really pitied her.
“I think my father is expecting us,” said Miss Methvyn, turning to Mr. Guildford. Then she led the way out of the room, across the hall, down the long passage, and up one flight of stairs, the young man following her.
“Is Colonel Methvyn pretty well today?” he inquired, as they went along. “I mean, is this what you consider one of his good days?”
“Yes, I think so,” said Cicely consideringly, stopping for a moment as she spoke. “He has been better this last week or two on the whole. Last month,” her voice faltered a very little, and for an instant she hesitated; “last month he was very far from well. My little nephew’s death was a great shock to him. He will probably speak about it to you. I wanted to tell you so. It was a comfort to him—to us all—that you saw Charlie. I gathered from what Dr. Farmer told me that you thought him constitutionally a very delicate child.”
She looked up with a wistful inquiry in her eyes, somewhat at variance with her perfectly calm tone of voice. Mr. Guildford understood her.
“I did think so,” he said without hesitation. “I believe him to have been an exceedingly fragile child. I have no hesitation in saying that his living to grow up would have been little short of a miracle. And I am equally sure that the greatest care must have been taken of him to rear him even so far.”
Miss Methvyn was silent for a moment.
“Thank you for telling me this,” she said at last quietly. “I am sure it is true. You will say so to my father, if he comes upon the subject? Invalids, you know,” she went on hurriedly, “are apt to become morbid about anything they think too much about. My father could not for long feel satisfied that everything had been done. It was natural; but,” she paused for a little, “but one must try not to judge by results,” she said at last, as she opened the door of her father’s sitting-room.
Colonel Methvyn half lay, half sat on a sort of couch so constructed as to afford him the greatest possible ease and variety of posture. On a low chair beside him sat his wife, a fair, somewhat careworn, but still handsome woman, who must, once upon a time, have been beautiful. More beautiful, strictly speaking than her daughter, thought Mr. Guildford, as he glanced at them for a moment as they stood together, Mrs. Methvyn having risen as Cicely and the stranger entered. For the resemblance was strong enough to admit of, if not to provoke, comparison. There was more colour and contrast about the mother; her hair and eyes were some shades darker, her complexion had evidently been more brilliant, her expression was more changeful. She looked many years younger than her husband, though in reality he was only ten years her senior; her manner to him was full of anxious devotion, he was evidently her first thought.
Colonel Methvyn greeted Mr. Guildford cordially but nervously; Mrs. Methvyn made some commonplace remark about the weather with the evident object of setting the stranger at his ease, her kindly intention being, however, to some extent defeated by the scarcely veiled anxiety with which she watched to see if the impression made by the stranger upon her husband was to be a favourable one. It was altogether a little stiff and uncomfortable. Miss Methvyn came to the rescue.
“Mother,” she said gently, “Geneviève is just finishing her letter, and you said you had a little bit to put in. There is not much time.”
Mrs. Methvyn looked at her husband irresolutely; a quick glance passed between her daughter and Mr. Guildford. “You don’t mind mother leaving you, do you, papa?” said Cicely.
“Not for a few minutes. You will come back in a few minutes, Helen?” said the invalid.
Cicely was on the alert to take advantage of the permission, and passing her arm through her mother’s, they left the room together.
“He seems a sensible sort of young man,” said Mrs. Methvyn to her daughter, when they were out of hearing. “I do hope your father will take to him.”
“The only way is to leave them alone,” said Cicely. “I do hope papa will like him for more reasons than one. It will be a relief to you, poor mother, if he takes a fancy to Mr. Guildford—even two or three hours change will do you good.”
“Don’t say that, dear,” said Mrs. Methvyn hastily. “I am not happy away from him. I always fancy he must be wanting me. And the most I can do seems nothing, as I have often told you, when I look back upon the past and think of all his goodness. And he is so patient! But do you know, Cicely, I don’t think your father’s spirits are as good as they were, though I can’t see that his health is worse.”
“Do you mean since Charlie’s death?” said Cicely quietly.
“No, not only that. It almost seems to me as if some new anxiety were on his mind,” answered Mrs. Methvyn. “He talks so much about you and your future.”
“But there is nothing to be anxious about in that?” exclaimed Cicely in surprise. “It is all settled as he wished.”
“Yes, but he has begun lately to say he wishes he could see you settled—he seems to dread anything coming in the way. When Trevor comes home again, I half expect something more definite may be proposed.”
“Do you mean that papa would prefer our engagement being more generally known?” inquired Cicely. “I don’t mind. It was papa’s own wish, you know, that it should not be formally announced, because it was likely to be a long one. But I am sure neither Trevor nor I would object to its being known if it would please papa. Of course that would make no difference about its length. It must be a long one.”
“I don’t know, dear. Sometimes I think it would be better not to delay it so long,” said Mrs. Methvyn with some hesitation.
They were in the large hall by now. Mrs. Methvyn had sat down on one of the sofas, Cicely standing near. As her mother spoke, she knelt down on the floor beside her, and looked up earnestly in her face.
“Mamma, that could not be. Oh! don’t let it be proposed,” she said. “I could not marry Trevor if it were to take me away from you and papa while I know you want me? What would you do without me? Oh! no, no; you must not talk of sending me away from you for a long time. Not at least till Amiel comes home again.”
“But, dear, we must consider the Fawcetts’ wishes—Trevor’s own wishes—as well as ours,” said Mrs. Methvyn.
“Trevor doesn’t mind waiting,” said Cicely naïvely. “I don’t think he is in any hurry to be married. We understand each other perfectly. But I don’t quite understand you, mamma. I don’t believe you have told me all that is in your mind. You first said it was my father who wanted to see me married, and then you jumped off to the other side and said it was Trevor. I believe the truth is, you want to get rid of me.”
She spoke playfully, but with a slight plaintiveness.
“My darling, what nonsense!” exclaimed her mother. “What we should do without you I cannot even think. But I am not inconsistent. What I mean is that I can see your father sometimes of late has begun to fear the Fawcetts may not like the long delay. Frederica said something of the kind before him one day.”
“She didn’t mean it. She often speaks at random. In reality, she is very well pleased to defer the day when her son shall be hers no longer,” said Cicely lightly.
Just then the hall clock struck.
“Geneviève’s letter, mamma,” exclaimed Miss Methvyn. “She is in the library.”
“I will go at once,” said her mother, rising as she spoke. “Poor Geneviève how she must feel leaving her home. I hope she will be happy with us, Cicely. She seems so sweet and gentle, and is so very pretty.”
“Yes, she is lovely, very lovely,” said Cicely thoughtfully, “and I hope she will be happy here. Mamma,” with a change of tone, “you will have to ask Mr. Guildford to stay to dinner.”
Mrs. Methvyn hurried away to write the letter she wished Geneviève to enclose. But it was too late. She was obliged to defer it till the next day, and there was only time for Geneviève to add a word to this effect before the post-bag had to be closed.