without breach of confidence! Honor’s first impulse was displeasure with the aunt, who she was sure had let her speak of, though not to, Miss Holmby without correcting her, and must purposely have kept the whole Raymond connection out of sight. ‘Depend upon it, Phœbe,’ she said, ‘she will keep her niece here.’
‘Poor Cecily, what will she do? I wish they would go, for I feel sure that she will think it her duty to hold out against him, till she has her father’s sanction; she will seem hard, and he—’
‘Do not reckon too much on him, Phœbe. Yes, it is a hard saying, but men care so much for youth and beauty, that he may find her less attractive. He may not understand how superior she must have become to what she was when he first knew her. Take care how you plead his cause without being sure of his sentiments.’
In fact, Honor thought Cecily Raymond so infinitely above Mervyn Fulmort, at his very best, that she could not regard the affair as hopeful under any aspect; and the parties concerned being just at the time of life when a woman becomes much the elder of a man of the same years, she fully expected that Cecily’s loss of bloom would entirely take away his desire to pursue his courtship.
The next event was a diplomatic call from Mrs. Holmby, to sound Miss Charlecote, whose name she knew as a friend both of the Fulmorts and Moorcroft Raymonds, and who, she had feared, would use her influence against so unequal a match for the wealthy young squire. When convinced of her admiration of Cecily, the good aunt proceeded to condemn the Raymond pride. They called it religion, but she was not so taken in. What reasonable person heeded what a young man might have done when he was sowing his wild oats? No, it was only that the Baronet blood disdained the distillery, whereas the Fulmorts represented that good old family, the Mervyns, and it was a very fine estate, was not it? She had no patience with such nonsense, not she! All Sir John’s doing; for, between themselves, poor dear George Raymond had no spirit at all, and was quite under his brother’s thumb. Such a family, and such a thing as it would be for them to have that girl so well married. She would not take her away. The place agreed with the Major, and she had told Cecily she could not think of leaving it.
Phœbe saw how close a guard Cecily must have learnt to keep on herself, for not a tone nor look betrayed that she was suffering unusual emotion. She occupied herself quietly, and was most tenderly kind to Bertha and Maria, exerting herself to converse with Bertha, and to enter into her pursuits as cheerfully as if her mind was disengaged. Sometimes Phœbe fancied that the exceeding gentleness of her voice indicated when she was most tried, but she attempted no more tête-à-têtes, and Miss Charlecote’s conjecture that in the recesses of her
heart she was rejoiced to be detained by no fault of her own, remained unverified. Phœbe resigned Cecily for the present to Bertha’s exclusive friendship. Competition would have been unwise, even if the forbidden subject had not been a restraint where the secret was known, while to soothe and cherish Bertha and settle her mind to begin life again was a welcome and fitting mission for Cecily, and inclination as well as discretion therefore held Phœbe aloof, preventing Maria from interfering, and trusting that Cecily was becoming Bertha’s Mr. Charlecote.
Mervyn came back sooner than she had expected him, having soon tired of Corsica. His year of ill-health and of her attendance had made him dependent on her; he did not enter into novelty or beauty without Bertha; and his old restless demon of discontent made him impatient to return to his ladies. So he took Phœbe by surprise, walking in as she was finishing a letter to Augusta before joining the others in the olivettes.
‘Well, Phœbe, how’s Bertha? Ready to leave this hot-vapour-bath of a hole?’
‘I don’t know what you will say to it now,’ she answered looking down, and a little tremulous. ‘Who do you think is here?’