“I ventured to promise,” said the Colonel, addressing Honoria in an under voice, “that Darrell should hear you play Beethoven.”
HONORIA.—“Is Mr. Darrell so fond of music, then?”
COLONEL MORLEY.—“One would not have thought it. He keeps a secretary at Fawley who plays the flute. There’s something very interesting about Darrell. I wish you could hear his ideas on marriage and domestic life: more freshness of heart than in the young men one meets nowadays. It may be prejudice; but it seems to me that the young fellows of the present race, if more sober and staid than we were, are sadly wanting in character and spirit,—no warm blood in their veins. But I should not talk thus to a demoiselle who has all those young fellows at her feet.”
“Oh,” said Lady Selina, overhearing, and with a half laugh, “Honoria thinks much as you do: she finds the young men so insipid; all like one another,—the same set phrases.”
“The same stereotyped ideas,” added Honoria, moving away with a gesture of calm disdain.
“A very superior mind hers,” whispered the Colonel to Carr Vipont. “She’ll never marry a fool.”
Guy Darrell was very pleasant at “the small family dinnerparty.” Carr was always popular in his manners; the true old House of Commons manner, which was very like that of a gentleman-like public school. Lady Selina, as has been said before, in her own family circle was natural and genial. Young Carr, there, without his wife, more pretentious than his father,—being a Lord of the Admiralty,—felt a certain awe of Darrell, and spoke little, which was much to his own credit and to the general conviviality. The other members of the symposium, besides Lady Selina, Honoria, and a younger sister, were but Darrell, Lionel, and Lady Selina’s two cousins; elderly peers,—one with the garter, the other in the Cabinet,—jovial men who had been wild fellows once in the same mess-room, and still joked at each other whenever they met as they met now. Lionel, who remembered Vance’s description of Lady Selina, and who had since heard her spoken of in society as a female despot who carried to perfection the arts by which despots flourish, with majesty to impose, and caresses to deceive—an Aurungzebe in petticoats—was sadly at a loss to reconcile such portraiture with the good-humoured, motherly woman who talked to him of her home, her husband, her children, with open fondness and becoming pride, and who, far from being so formidably clever as the world cruelly gave out, seemed to Lionel rather below par in her understanding; strike from her talk its kindliness, and the residue was very like twaddle. After dinner, various members of the Vipont family dropped in,—asked impromptu by Carr or by Lady Selina, in hasty three-cornered notes, to take that occasion of renewing their acquaintance with their distinguished connection. By some accident, amongst those invited there were but few young single ladies; and, by some other accident, those few were all plain. Honoria Vipont was unequivocally the belle of the room. It could not but be observed that Darrell seemed struck with her,—talked with her more than with any other lady; and when she went to the piano, and played that great air of Beethoven’s, in which music seems to have got into a knot that only fingers the most artful can unravel, Darrell remained in his seat aloof and alone, listening no doubt with ravished attention. But just as the air ended, and Honoria turned round to look for him, he was gone.
Lionel did not linger long after him. The gay young man went thence to one of those vast crowds which seemed convened for a practical parody of Mr. Bentham’s famous proposition,—contriving the smallest happiness for the greatest number.
It was a very good house, belonging to a very great person. Colonel Morley had procured an invitation for Lionel, and said, “Go; you should be seen there.” Colonel Morley had passed the age of growing into society: no such cares for the morrow could add a cubit to his conventional stature. One amongst a group of other young men by the doorway, Lionel beheld Darrell, who had arrived before him, listening to a very handsome young lady, with an attention quite as earnest as that which had gratified the superior mind of the well-educated Honoria,—a very handsome young lady certainly, but not with a superior mind, nor supposed hitherto to have found young gentlemen “insipid.” Doubtless she would henceforth do so. A few minutes after Darrell was listening again; this time to another young lady, generally called “fast.” If his attentions to her were not marked, hers to him were. She rattled on to him volubly, laughed, pretty hoyden, at her own sallies, and seemed at last so to fascinate him by her gay spirits that he sat down by her side; and the playful smile on his lips—lips that had learned to be so gravely firm—showed that he could enter still into the mirth of childhood; for surely to the time-worn man the fast young lady must have seemed but a giddy child. Lionel was amused. Could this be the austere recluse whom he had left in the shades of Fawley? Guy Darrell, at his years, with his dignified repute, the object of so many nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles,—could he descend to be that most frivolous of characters, a male coquet? Was he in earnest? Was his vanity duped? Looking again, Lionel saw in his kinsman’s face a sudden return of the sad despondent expression which had moved his own young pity in the solitudes of Fawley. But in a moment the man roused himself: the sad expression was gone. Had the girl’s merry laugh again chased it away? But Lionel’s attention was now drawn from Darrell himself to the observations murmured round him, of which Darrell was the theme.
“Yes, he is bent on marrying again! I have it from Alban Morley: immense fortune; and so young-looking, any girl might fall in love with such eyes and forehead; besides, what a jointure he could settle!... Do look at that girl, Flora Vyvyan, trying to make a fool of him. She can’t appreciate that kind of man, and she would not be caught by his money; does not want it.... I wonder she is not afraid of him. He is certainly quizzing her.... The men think her pretty; I don’t.... They say he is to return to Parliament, and have a place in the Cabinet. ... No! he has no children living: very natural he should marry again. ... A nephew!—you are quite mistaken. Young Haughton is no nephew: a very distant connection; could not expect to be the heir.... It was given out, though, at Paris. The Duchess thought so, and so did Lady Jane. They’ll not be so civil to young Haughton now.... Hush—”