Than when I was a boy."
"Stuff! nonsense!" exclaimed Harvey, almost aloud. "I declare I am as bad as Julia—positively morbid. As if that had anything to do with the question. One would think Marjory had bewitched me! I have to consider my duty to the estate. If my poor old uncle's idea had been carried out, the property must have been completely wrecked—hampered for years at all events. Hermione shall have what is right, but I must have time for consideration. By-and-by I shall know better what really lies at my command."
[CHAPTER XIV.]
EXPECTED.
SEVERAL weeks had glided by when, one day towards the middle of August, Harvey Dalrymple and his party were to arrive at the Hall.
He had not even yet plainly told Hermione that the widow and her child would be permanent members of his household. There was "time enough," and Harvey always deferred the unpleasant till to-morrow. So Hermione only knew that another bedroom had to be prepared.
"A strange time to come—before Harvey and Julia are even settled in," she said, sighing. "Things would have been bad enough without that."
Hermione had slept at the Rectory hitherto, but this night she would occupy her old quarters. Better so; the plunge had to be made, and the sooner was the wiser.
These past weeks had gone very peacefully, and to Hermione not unhappily. The sorrow had been a gentle sorrow, and she was surrounded by kindness. She was so young, and so attractive in her deep mourning, that few could look upon her unmoved. Wherever she went she met glances and words of pity or sympathy, alike from rich and poor. Mr. Fitzalan had never been more fatherly and kind than now in her time of severe loss; Marjory was nothing less than her abject slave; and Harry, returning home for his long vacation, forgot his own past strictures, to place himself, metaphorically speaking, at her feet. Why not? He was no longer bound, in loyalty to Mr. Dalrymple's desire, to hold aloof. Hermione could never belong to Harvey.
There could be no doubt that Hermione was soothed and comforted, that she liked this kind of thing. To find herself a centre of thought and care, of love and adulation, did not beget a conceited mood or manner, but had a gently lulling effect. She accepted all the petting, the care, the admiration, with a soft humility of demeanour which deceived almost everybody, herself certainly included. "So simple and unconscious," was the general verdict. Perhaps nobody in the place saw deeper except Mr. Fitzalan; for, if Harry could have seen, Harry would not see. He put on tinted glasses, and gave himself blindly up to the infatuation of her sweet presence. And Mr. Fitzalan said nothing. He knew that no words of his could make Hermione see herself as she was, and he knew that Hermione's time of trial was yet to come.