In the meantime, the session of Parliament had begun, and the Rivers’ party had, since February, inhabited Park Lane. Meta had looked pale and pensive, as she bade her friends at Stoneborough good-bye; but only betrayed that she had rather have stayed at home, by promising herself great enjoyment in meeting them again at Easter.
Flora was, on the other hand, in the state of calm patronage that betokened perfect satisfaction. She promised wonders for Miss Bracy’s sisters—talked of inviting Mary and Blanche to see sights and take lessons; and undertook to send all the apparatus needed by Cocksmoor school; and she did, accordingly, send down so many wonderful articles, that curate and schoolmistress were both frightened; Mrs. Taylor thought the easels were new-fashioned instruments of torture; and Ethel found herself in a condition to be liberal to Stoneborough National School.
Flora was a capital correspondent, and made it her business to keep Margaret amused, so that the home-party were well informed of the doings of each of her days—and very clever her descriptions were. She had given herself a dispensation from general society until after Easter; but, in the meantime, both she and Meta seemed to find great enjoyment in country rides and drives, and in quiet little dinners at home, to George’s agreeable political friends. With the help of two such ladies as Mrs. and Miss Rivers, Ethel could imagine George’s house pleasant enough to attract clever people; but she was surprised to find how full her sister’s letters were of political news.
It was a period when great interests were in agitation; and the details of London talk and opinions were extremely welcome. Dr. Spencer used to come in to ask after “Mrs. Rivers’s Intelligencer”; and, when he heard the lucid statements, would say, she ought to have been a “special correspondent.” And her father declared that her news made him twice as welcome to his patients; but her cleverest sentences always were prefaced with “George says,” or “George thinks,” in a manner that made her appear merely the dutiful echo of his sentiments.
In an early letter, Flora mentioned how she had been reminded of poor Harry, by finding Miss Walkinghame’s card. That lady lived with her mother at Richmond, and, on returning the visit, Flora was warmly welcomed by the kind old Lady Walkinghame, who insisted on her bringing her baby and spending a long day. The sisters-in-law had been enchanted with Miss Walkinghame, whose manners, wrote Flora, certainly merited papa’s encomium.
On the promised “long day,” they found an unexpected addition to the party, Sir Henry Walkinghame, who had newly returned from the continent. “A fine-looking, agreeable man, about five-and-thirty,” Flora described him, “very lively and entertaining. He talked a great deal of Dr. Spencer, and of the life in the caves at Thebes; and he asked me whether that unfortunate place, Cocksmoor, did not owe a great deal to me, or to one of my sisters. I left Meta to tell him that story, and they became very sociable over it.”
A day or two after—“Sir Henry Walkinghame has been dining with us. He has a very good voice, and we had some delightful music in the evening.”
By and by Sir Henry was the second cavalier, when they went to an oratorio, and Meta’s letter overflowed with the descriptions she had heard from him of Italian church music. He always went to Rome for Easter, and had been going as usual, this spring, but he lingered, and, for once, remained in England, where he had only intended to spend a few days on necessary business.
The Easter recess was not spent at the Grange, but at Lady Leonora’s pretty house in Surrey. She had invited the party in so pressing a manner that Flora did not think it right to decline. Meta expressed some disappointment at missing Easter among her school-children, but she said a great deal about the primroses and the green corn-fields, and nightingales—all which Ethel would have set down to her trick of universal content, if it had not appeared that Sir Henry was there too, and shared in all the delicious rides.
“What would Ethel say,” wrote Flora, “to have our little Meta as Lady of the Manor of Cocksmoor? He has begun to talk about Drydale, and there are various suspicious circumstances that Lady Leonora marks with the eyes of a discreet dowager. It was edifying to see how, from smiles, we came to looks, and by and by to confidential talks, which have made her entirely forgive me for having so many tall brothers. Poor dear old Mr. Rivers! Lady Leonora owns that it was the best thing possible for that sweet girl that he did not live any longer to keep her in seclusion; it is so delightful to see her appreciated as she deserves, and with her beauty and fortune, she might make any choice she pleases. In fact, I believe Lady Leonora would like to look still higher for her, but this would be mere ambition, and we should be far better satisfied with such a connection as this, founded on mutual and increasing esteem, with a man so well suited to her, and fixing her so close to us. You must not, however, launch out into an ocean of possibilities, for the good aunt has only infected me with the castle-building propensities of chaperons, and Meta is perfectly unconscious, looking on him as too hopelessly middle-aged, to entertain any such evil designs, avowing freely that she likes him, and treating him very nearly as she does papa. It is my business to keep ‘our aunt,’ who, between ourselves, has, below the surface, the vulgarity of nature that high-breeding cannot eradicate, from startling the little humming-bird, before the net has been properly twined round her bright little heart. As far as I can see, he is much smitten, but very cautious in his approaches, and he is wise.”