Violet eagerly explained how every one was fully satisfied that, though Mrs. Finch was too free and dashing in manner, and too fond of attracting notice, there was principle and rectitude at the bottom, and that her life of dissipation was chiefly caused by the tedium of her home. All attachment between her and Mark Gardner had evidently died away; and though it might have been wiser to keep him at a distance, she had some good motives for allowing him to be often at her house.
Lady Fotheringham was relieved to hear this, and added that she might have trusted to Jane. Violet was surprised to find that Miss Gardner held a very high place in Lady Fotheringham’s esteem, and was supposed by her to take most watchful, motherly care of her headstrong younger sister. She had made herself extremely agreeable at Worthbourne, and had corresponded with Lady Fotheringham ever since; and now Violet heard that Jane had thought the marriage with Mr. Finch a great risk, and would willingly have dissuaded her sister from it; but that Georgina had been bent upon it! ‘thinking, no doubt, poor girl, that riches and gaiety would make her happy! I wish we could have made it pleasanter to her at Worthbourne!’
‘She has spoken very affectionately of you.’
‘Ah, poor child! she had met with little kindness before. She used to pour out her griefs to me. It was that wretched Mark who broke her heart, and after that she seemed not to care what became of her. But I am a little comforted by your account. I will try to see her to-morrow, poor dear. Percy was hoping I should be able, although I think that he is quite right not to visit them himself.’
Violet agreed to all, and was pleased at the notion of the good old lady’s influence being tried on one evidently amenable to right impressions. As far as she herself was concerned, the visit was very gratifying, and when the leave-taking came, it seemed as if they had been intimate for years.
Violet sat pondering whether the dulness of Worthbourne and the disappointment of her first love had been the appointed cross of Georgina Gardner, cast aside in impatience of its weight. And then she tried to reconcile the conflicting accounts of Jane’s influence in the matter, till she thought she was growing uncharitable; and after having tried in vain to measure the extent of Percy’s annoyance, she looked from the window to see if carriages seemed to be returning from Epsom, and then with a sigh betook herself to the book Theodora had provided for her solitude.
She had long to wait. Arthur and his sister came home later than she had expected, and did not bring the regale of amusing description that they had promised her.
Arthur was silent and discontented, and went to his smoking-room. Theodora only said it had been very hot, and for the first time really looked tired, and owned that she was so. It had been hard work, first to draw Arthur into Mrs. Finch’s party, against which he exerted all his lazy good-humoured “vis inertia”—undertaking to show her everything, and explain all to her, be at her service all the day, if only she would keep away from them and their nonsense. But when their carriage was found, and Arthur was dragged into the midst of them, a still harder task arose. She was frightened to see Mark Gardner conversing with him, while he looked eager and excited, and she hastened to interrupt, put forth every power of attraction, in the resolve entirely to monopolize Mr. Gardner; and for a long time, at the expense of severe exertion in talking nonsense, she succeeded. But some interruption occurred; she missed Mr. Gardner, she missed Arthur; they were waited for; she wondered and fretted herself in vain, and at length beheld them returning in company-heard Mrs. Finch gaily scolding them, and understood that there had been bets passing!
She called it fatigue, but it was rather blank dread, and the sense that she had put herself and others in the way of evil.
It was possible that Arthur might have been only a spectator; or, if not, that he might have known where to stop. He had bought his experience long ago, at high cost; but Theodora was but too well aware of his unsteadiness of purpose and facile temper; and in spite of his resolutions, it was a fearful thing to have seen him in such a place, in such company, and to know that almost against his own desire she had conducted him thither for the gratification of her self-will.