He smiled in return, and shook the young man's hand warmly: "You gratify me, my dear sir. Yes, indeed, I have done my best, my very best, for the estate, as my father did before me; and the day upon which I shall deliver up my accounts and those of your guardians into your hands is one to which I have long looked forward with pleasant anticipation. In the mean time I may say, in the name of your guardians, that you can draw upon us in excess of your ordinary allowance. There are certain accumulations of income which we always thought would serve for some such purpose as this projected journey. We could have wished, of course, that it had been delayed, but as matters stand for you to anticipate their receipt by a few days can be an affair of no great moment to us."
And thus it was arranged. Arthur's way was smoothed, and nothing remained to be done but the attainment of some clue to Maurice Grey's place of refuge.
[CHAPTER XV.]
THE YOUNG PEOPLE UNDERSTAND EACH OTHER AT LAST.
If that there be one scene in life wherefrom
Evil is absent, it is pure early love.
Adèle's languor increased with the summer. The heat, which had grown intense in and about London, the fatigues of the season, the anxiety about Arthur and their mutual friend Mrs. Grey,—all these worked upon a constitution in which the seeds of delicacy were deeply rooted.
Mrs. Churchill began to be anxious, and to cast about for some suitable method of giving her daughter change of air. Nothing presented itself for the moment. It was too early for Scarborough or Whitby; only plebeians frequented Brighton in July; against the Continent, Switzerland, Germany or the Italian lakes Adèle protested loudly, and the good Mrs. Churchill felt a certain sinking of heart at the prospect of putting the breadth of the Channel between herself and England during the London season. The little gossip of society, the projets de mariage, the whispers of political complications, the scandals of high life were dear to Mrs. Churchill's soul. And at this special time, when the air was rife with rumor, it would have been irritating, to say the least of it, to go out into the blank of an existence from which the Morning Post and Court Journal would of necessity be excluded. But none of these things could alter the fact. Adèle was pining in the great city; she wanted change of air.
Indecision and anxiety are not improving to the temper. The good-natured Mrs. Churchill became sharp and irritable. She was annoyed with Adèle for being ill, and with Fate for not delaying her illness by a few weeks, when London could be left without a pang, and the bracing climate of Scarborough would have been open to them; she was angry with Arthur for his new independence and mysterious course of conduct, and especially with that absurd Mrs. Grey, who seemed, by means of her romantic story and inexplicable power of fascination, to be at the root of all the inconvenience. The worst of it was that this internal effervescence could be allowed very little external vent, for Arthur and Mrs. Grey were out of reach, and the doctors, several of whom had been consulted, had given express orders that Adèle should be kept as quiet as possible. Of course it was idle to rave against Fate, for Fate is calm and impersonal, and only bruises the breasts of the tumultuous. The servants were the only sufferers, but they took their mistress's ill-temper with great equanimity, knowing their personal comforts would not be one jot diminished, and that this storm would pass as others had passed before it. But Mrs. Churchill could not always keep her annoyance from her daughter, and on one of these hot days her feelings became quite too much for her.
Adèle was on the sofa again, deeply engrossed in one of her pet volumes with the calf-skin binding. Her mother had been wandering about from one position to another in the vain effort to cool herself; she had tried at least a dozen different fans, she had bathed her face and hands again and again in eau-de-cologne, she had read a little and worked a little, had taken up the paper and thrown it down again, had sighed and fumed and bustled till her state was really pitiable.