“No; only quoting poetry.”
“Then what made you look so angry, my dear fellow? I know it was your kind feeling for me. As you say, he is a formidable rival. But that can’t be his own hair. Do you think he wears a toupet? I am sure he was praising Beatrice. He is evidently very much smitten with her. But I don’t think she is a woman to be caught by mere rank and fortune! Do you? Why can’t you speak?”
“If you do not get her consent soon, I think she is lost to you,” said Randal, slowly; and before Frank could recover his dismay, glided from the house.
CHAPTER IX.
Violante’s first evening at the Lansmeres had passed more happily to her than the first evening under the same roof had done to Helen. True that she missed her father much, Jemima somewhat; but she so identified her father’s cause with Harley that she had a sort of vague feeling that it was to promote that cause that she was on this visit to Harley’s parents. And the countess, it must be owned, was more emphatically cordial to her than she had ever yet been to Captain Digby’s orphan. But perhaps the real difference in the heart of either girl was this, that Helen felt awe of Lady Lansmere, and Violante felt only love for Lord L’Estrange’s mother. Violante, too, was one of those persons whom a reserved and formal person, like the countess, “can get on with,” as the phrase goes. Not so poor little Helen,—so shy herself, and so hard to coax into more than gentle monosyllables. And Lady Lansmere’s favourite talk was always of Harley. Helen had listened to such talk with respect and interest. Violante listened to it with inquisitive eagerness, with blushing delight. The mother’s heart noticed the distinction between the two, and no wonder that that heart moved more to Violante than to Helen. Lord Lansmere, too, like most gentlemen of his age, clumped all young ladies together as a harmless, amiable, but singularly stupid class of the genus-Petticoat, meant to look pretty, play the piano, and talk to each other about frocks and sweethearts. Therefore this animated, dazzling creature, with her infinite variety of look and play of mind, took him by surprise, charmed him into attention, and warmed him into gallantry. Helen sat in her quiet corner, at her work, sometimes listening with almost mournful, though certainly unenvious, admiration at Violante’s vivid, yet ever unconscious, eloquence of word and thought, sometimes plunged deep into her own secret meditations. And all the while the work went on the same, under the small, noiseless fingers. This was one of Helen’s habits that irritated the nerves of Lady Lansmere. She despised young ladies who were fond of work. She did not comprehend how often it is the resource of the sweet womanly mind, not from want of thought, but from the silence and the depth of it. Violante was surprised, and perhaps disappointed, that Harley had left the house before dinner, and did not return all the evening. But Lady Lansmere, in making excuse for his absence, on the plea of engagements, found so good an opportunity to talk of his ways in general,—of his rare promise in boyhood, of her regret at the inaction of his maturity, of her hope to see him yet do justice to his natural powers,—that Violante almost ceased to miss him.
And when Lady Lansmere conducted her to her room, and, kissing her cheek tenderly, said, “But you are just the person Harley admires,—just the person to rouse him from melancholy dreams, of which his wild humours are now but the vain disguise”—Violante crossed her arms on her bosom, and her bright eyes, deepened into tenderness, seemed to ask, “He melancholy—and why?”
On leaving Violante’s room, Lady Lansmere paused before the door of Helen’s; and, after musing a little while, entered softly.
Helen had dismissed her maid; and, at the moment Lady Lansmere entered, she was kneeling at the foot of the bed, her hands clasped before her face.
Her form, thus seen, looked so youthful and child-like, the attitude itself was so holy and so touching, that the proud and cold expression on Lady Lansmere’s face changed. She shaded the light involuntarily, and seated herself in silence that she might not disturb the act of prayer.