“I am nothing, Ma Mie, positively nothing, if I am not ‘fin.’ It is the spirit of my old calling that survives in me. Nay, I even thought, in the distributions of the host’s attentions to his friends, I could name the men who stood with a goodly balance to their account, and point out those who were being, what is called, accommodated.”
“Oh, this is too much!” said she, laughing; but there was nothing in her tone or look that implied a shade of incredulity.
“Well, you are to see them both to-day; they will be here to dinner.” He said this with a half-suppressed sigh, for the visit promised him very little that was agreeable.
He was essentially a man of conventionalities, and there were some difficulties in the present case that embarrassed him. First, he should be unable to have any dinner company to meet his visitors. He had long ceased to have intercourse with his country neighbours, and, of course, none would think of “calling” on his friends. This was provoking enough, but a greater trouble remained behind it. Kate’s presence! How was he to account for that? Who was she? Why was she there? Who, and what, and where were her friends? Would not the Ladarelles at once connect the estrangement in which he lived from all society with the fact of this girl being beneath his roof? Would they not at once jump to the conclusion, It is this scandal has deterred all from visiting him? Now, it is just possible that something in this allegation against his morality might have tickled the morbid vanity of the old rake, who loved to think that youth and vice were convertible terms, and he even smirked as he imagined himself called on for his defence. Still, in his element of gentleman, there survived the shame of the part that would be assigned to Kate by such an imputation, and it is but justice to him to say that he felt this acutely. Had there been time for such an arrangement, he would have procured a governess, and sent her away to some sea-side spot. As it was, he thought of taking the Vyners’s Cottage, and placing her there under the charge of Mrs. Simcox. This would have been easy, as the Cottage had been advertised to let for some time back; but, as ill luck would, have, it, some one had just arrived there, whether as friend or tenant, none knew.
It was true, he might keep her unseen for, the few days the visit would last. The Castle was ample enough to secure a retreat which should be inviolable; but there were difficulties, too, about; this, not easily to be met.
He could not implicitly rely on the discretion of servants, especially of servants who found themselves in, the presence of the coming heir, of him who should be “king hereafter;” and again, he was not quite sure how she herself would meet a proposition that assigned her so equivocal a position. She was very proud, and on one or two occasions he had seen her display a spirit that no old gentleman of his stamp would possibly expose himself to from a young girl, if he could help it. There was, then, nothing left but to present her as his ward, a word so wide in acceptance, that he trusted it might defy scrutiny, and with this resolve, though not without misgivings, he went about giving his orders, and directing the arrangements to receive his guests.
Even this office had its shade of sadness, pleasant as it is at ordinary times to prepare for those who come to enliven solitude or break a monotony, which even of itself savours of gloom; the task is not so agreeable if undertaken for those who come to inspect what will be their own hereafter; what, even as they survey, they seem half inclined to grasp; what, while they look at, they speculate on the changes they will effect in, thinking of that day when he, who now does the honours, shall have left the stage, and they themselves become the actors.
Kate, however, accompanied him everywhere, aiding by her counsels and assisting by her suggestions, and serving in this way to dispel much of that depression which the task imposed. It was, as they both were returning from one of the gardens, that a keeper came forward with a dead pheasant in his hand.
