Muriel guessed what was coming, and her feelings were peculiarly diversified.
“I want to persuade Daniel Lane to accept some official position,” he said. “Of course I can’t offer him the mere Oriental Secretaryship which poor dear Rupert has left vacant; but I think its scope and importance could be greatly extended, amplified, and he might be tempted.”
“I doubt it,” Muriel replied. She did not know quite what to say.
“I shall write to him at once,” Lord Blair went on, nodding archly at her. “I shall say how whole-heartedly you second my proposal.”
Muriel stiffened. “O, no, please,” she answered, quickly, and the colour mounted to her face. “Please leave me out of it; Mr. Lane and I have nothing in common. I hardly know him, and much of what I do know I dislike.”
Her father’s face fell. There is no telling how far his scheming mind had advanced into the future, nor what plans he was forming for the well-being of his only child. It may only be stated with certainty that he had a very great admiration for Daniel, and that he was not blind to the fact that the object of this admiration was heir-presumptive to a man who, by common report, was drinking himself to death.
To Muriel, however, the prospect of having the masterful Mr. Lane actually on the premises was disturbing in the extreme, and, during the ensuing days, added not a little to her mental distress.
She greatly missed Rupert’s entertaining company; and although, as the days passed, she realized that his death was not as shattering a blow to her as she had thought, the remembrance of their brief romance often brought the tears to her eyes. Yet even as she wiped them away she was conscious that her sorrows were aroused rather by the tragedy itself than by her own heart’s desolation. It is true that her emotions had been deeply stirred by his passion; but gradually the fires, lighted for so brief a moment, died down, and she was obliged to admit that her heart was not broken.
But if the romantic effect of the sad affair was proved in these few days to be less severe than she had at first supposed, there was another aspect of the matter which had a very profound bearing upon her mental attitude. The sudden termination of Rupert’s career had set her thinking about life in a way that she had never thought before. If death were always so near at hand, if so simple an accident so quickly put out the little lamp of existence, ought one not to concentrate all the forces of the human constitution upon the enjoyment of each passing hour?
She stood off from herself as an artist stands back from his picture, and she saw that she was but a shadow amongst shadows, a speck of vapour passing across time’s fixed stare, having no substance of which one could say, “this at least will remain.” Today she was here; tomorrow she would be dissolved and gone.