A RETURN
The Squire shut to the gate in the garden wall of the Dower House and stepped out across the park. His face was lit up with gratification, his step was as light as that of an elderly man of seventeen stone very well could be.
He had been to see Virginia, and she had given him the news that had caused this elation.
She had just come down from Scotland, where John Spence had taken a moor, leaving Dick amongst the grouse. Mrs. Clinton was there too, and Joan, and a large house-party besides. The Squire had been asked, but it was many years since the twelfth had caused a stir in his movements, and he had refused. Didn't care much about it; might come to them later, when they moved down, for the pheasants. It was a not unpleasant change for him to have the house entirely to himself. But he had got a little tired of his solitary condition after a fortnight, and had been extremely glad to see Virginia, who had come South to meet a friend on her way from America to Switzerland.
It seemed that young Inverell—the Earl of Inverell, twenty-seven years of age, master of mines as well as acres, handsome and amiable as well as high-principled—in fact the very type and picture of young Earls—whose Highland property marched with that which John Spence had rented, had been constantly of their party, even to the extent of putting off one of his own.
The attraction? Joan.
There could be no doubt about it, Virginia had said. He was head over ears. And Joan was as gay as a lark. It was the sweetest thing to see them together—a picture of adorable youth, and love, unspoken as yet, but shining out of their eyes and ringing in their laughter for everyone to see and hear.
She had enlarged on the enchanting spectacle, and the Squire had listened to her tale, not so much because he "cared about that sort of thing," but so as to assure himself that it was undoubtedly a true one, on both sides, and that Joan, especially, would not be likely to rebel a second time.
How providentially things worked out! Young Inverell was a parti beside whom the eligibility of Bobby Trench paled perceptibly. Bobby Trench, socially and financially, would have been a good match. This would be a great one. If it would not "lift" the Clintons of Kencote, which the Squire was persuaded no marriage whatever could do, it would at least point their retiring worth. It would bring them into that prominence in which, to speak truth, they had always been somewhat lacking.
And he was a nice young fellow too, so the Squire had always heard; already beginning modestly to play the part in public affairs which was expected of the head of his house; untouched as yet by the staleness of the world, which had touched Bobby Trench so much to the Squire's disgust, until he had closed his senses to it; and a fitting mate in point of youth and good looks for a beautiful young girl like Joan, which Bobby Trench could hardly have been said to be, in spite of his ever youthful behaviour.