“Ah!” he said abruptly; “I cannot stay longer here, dreaming away the work-day hours in a fairy ring. I am going to town to-day by the next train.”
“Yoa are coming back?”
“Of course,—this evening. I left no address at my lodgings in London. There must be a large accumulation of letters; some, no doubt, from my father and mother. I am only going for them. Good-by. How kindly you have listened to me!”
“Shall we fix a day next week for seeing the remains of the old Roman villa? I will ask Mrs. Cameron and her niece to be of the party.”
“Any day you please,” said Kenelm joyfully.
CHAPTER XV.
KENELM did indeed find a huge pile of letters and notes on reaching his forsaken apartment in Mayfair; many of them merely invitations for days long past, none of them of interest except two from Sir Peter, three from his mother, and one from Tom Bowles.
Sir Peter’s were short. In the first he gently scolded Kenelm for going away without communicating any address; and stated the acquaintance he had formed with Gordon, the favourable impression that young gentleman had made on him, the transfer of the L20,000 and the invitation given to Gordon, the Traverses, and Lady Glenalvon. The second, dated much later, noted the arrival of his invited guests, dwelt with warmth unusual to Sir Peter on the attractions of Cecilia, and took occasion to refer, not the less emphatically because as it were incidentally, to the sacred promise which Kenelm had given him never to propose to a young lady until the case had been submitted to the examination and received the consent of Sir Peter. “Come to Exmundham, and if I do not give my consent to propose to Cecilia Travers hold me a tyrant and rebel.”
Lady Chillingly’s letters were much longer. They dwelt more complainingly on his persistence in eccentric habits; so exceedingly unlike other people, quitting London at the very height of the season, going without even a servant nobody knew where: she did not wish to wound his feelings; but still those were not the ways natural to a young gentleman of station. If he had no respect for himself, he ought to have some consideration for his parents, especially his poor mother. She then proceeded to comment on the elegant manners of Leopold Travers, and the good sense and pleasant conversation of Chillingly Gordon, a young man of whom any mother might be proud. From that subject she diverged to mildly querulous references to family matters. Parson John had expressed himself very rudely to Mr. Chillingly Gordon upon some book by a foreigner,—Comte or Count, or some such name,—on which, so far as she could pretend to judge, Mr. Gordon had uttered some very benevolent sentiments about humanity, which, in the most insolent manner, Parson John had denounced as an attack on religion. But really Parson John was too High Church for her. Having thus disposed of Parson John, she indulged some ladylike wailings on the singular costume of the three Miss Chillinglys. They had been asked by Sir Peter, unknown to her—so like him—to meet their guests; to meet Lady Glenalvon and Miss Travers, whose dress was so perfect (here she described their dress); and they came in pea-green with pelerines of mock blonde, and Miss Sally with corkscrew ringlets and a wreath of jessamine, “which no girl after eighteen would venture to wear.”