Miss Lumley was her cousin and her foil—tall, fair, statuesque, and silent. However, she was a capital tennis and billiard player, an untiring pedestrian; and, as Lady Rachel talked enough for two ordinary women, she made up for Miss Lumley’s shortcomings.
Lady Rachel was most anxious to get her brother settled—married to a nice girl, such as Madeline, with a large fortune, and she intended to forward the match in every way. She lost no opportunity of sounding Tony’s praises to Madeline, or of plying him with encouragement and advice. Advice, especially given as such for his own good, he shirked, as a child does physic. He admired Miss West. She was unaffected; there was no nonsense about her; she was handsome and ladylike. She would accept him, of course; and he really might do worse. He did not particularly want to marry her, or any one; but his income, no matter how well contrived and cut, was far too small for a man of his position. And money was a pleasant thing.
Wound up by his anxious sister, Lord Tony had asked for and obtained Mr. West’s permission to speak to his daughter, and now the only thing that remained to do was to ask the young lady to ratify the treaty. They had been nearly three weeks in Ireland, whilst this affair was quietly brewing.
Madeline had no suspicion of her father’s wishes, or her suitor’s intentions; such an idea would have filled her—as it subsequently did—with horror. She liked dancing and tennis, and amusing herself as much as other young women of her age; but the notion of any one falling in love with her, in her new and attractive character, never once entered her brain. Pretty speeches and compliments she laughed at and turned aside; and it was generally mooted that the Australian heiress was as cold as the typical iceberg, and had a genius for administering the most crushing snubs if any one ventured on to the borderland, yea, the very suburbs of love-making; and it had been hinted that either there was some pauper lover in the background, or that Miss West was waiting for a duke—English or foreign—to lay his strawberry leaves at her feet. She thought Lord Tony extremely plain, and rather stupid; but he was so easily entertained, and cheery, and helped to make things go off well, that she was glad he formed one of the party. She had seen so much of him in London, she knew him better than any of their young men acquaintances; and he was always so good-tempered, so unassuming, and so confidential, that she entertained quite a sisterly regard for him.
Of Lord Anthony’s present views and intentions she had no more idea than her pet Chinese spaniel. If he was épris with any one, it was with the dashing Pamela, who told his fortune by cards, and played him even at billiards; and his proposal came upon her without any preparation, and like a bolt from the blue. The bolt fell in this fashion, and on a certain sleepy Sunday afternoon.
Sunday at Clane had many empty hours. Mr. West was old-fashioned, and set his face against shooting, tennis, billiards, or even that curate’s own game—croquet. The hours after lunch were spent in smoking, sleeping, novel-reading, devouring fruit in the big garden, or sitting under the lime-trees. It was thus that Lord Anthony found Madeline, surveying the misty haze of a hot August afternoon with a pair of abstracted eyes. Mr. West had given him a hint of her whereabouts, and that here was the hour, and he was the man!
“She is a cold, undemonstrative, distant sort of girl,” he explained. “She has never had a fancy, that I know of” (no, certainly as yet, he had not known of it). “She likes you, I am sure; it will be all plain sailing.” And, thus encouraged, the suitor figuratively put to sea.
Madeline sat alone under the lime-trees in a low wicker chair, having been deserted by Lady Rachel, who had gone to have a comfortable snooze ere teatime.
It was a drowsy afternoon; the bees buzzed lazily over a bed of mignonette, which sent its fragrance far and near. Madeline’s book lay neglected in her lap. Her thoughts were far from it and Clane; they were with a certain hard-working barrister in London, who had written her a very rough, outspoken letter. Poor Laurence! Why could he not wait? Why could he not have patience? He was beginning to get on so well. She had seen a long review of one of his articles in Tooth and Nail. He was becoming quite a literary celebrity.
And, once he was up the ladder, even a few rungs, she would not feel the change so bitter, supposing her father was furious and implacable. Of course it would be a change! And she sighed as she smoothed out her cambric gown—which had cost eighteen guineas—with a pretty, delicate hand, laden with magnificent rings. Could it be possible that those soft white hands had ever blackened grates and made beds and washed up plates? Oh, such greasy plates and dishes!