'Insolvent, depend on it,' growled Sir Adrian, fitting on the consequence so that Cherry felt an uncontrollable impulse to giggle, and was glad to be sunk in the depths of a huge chair.
She was startled by Alda's answering rather fretfully, 'I don't see why—he was very rich.'
'The more reason. It is always the way with those Yankees.'
Mrs. Underwood took on herself to defend the solidity of the Travis interest as an article of her husband's belief; Wilmet and Cherry longed to change the conversation, but neither knew how; and it was Sir Adrian who found a fresh subject at last, on which the others willingly rode off.
They begged to have the carriage ordered at nine, and bade good-bye to Lady Vanderkist, who had good taste enough not to make another remark after the first into which she had been betrayed.
Marilda, however, did. 'Tell him I hope it is all right, and that I congratulate him with all my heart,' she said; and she looked as if she could have said more.
Perhaps Wilmet and Cherry were not sorry that Stella's being seated between them prevented discussion on the difference patience and constancy might have made. Wilmet, with her love for her sister, and recollection of that conjugal interpellation, might regret; while Geraldine, less prejudiced, felt that Ferdinand could hardly be pitied for the test that had spared him a wife with whom he could have so little in common; but both felt the contrast when they were met by Ferdinand, whose countenance, though not intellectual, was singularly noble, and full of a grand melancholy sweetness according with the regular outline and dark olive colouring, while the gentleness of his tone was not the conventional politeness of society, but somewhat of the old Spaniard enhanced by Christian grace.
For all that had come and gone, they were more comfortable with him now than when he had been Alda's exclusive property, and what was wanting in love had been made up in jealousy; but he was very low and sad; he had not come to the point of ceasing to regret Alda, and his native inertness shrank from the trouble and turmoil before him, when he had nothing to make riches valuable to him, and could not bear to be wrenched from the shadow of St. Matthew's, and tossed he knew not where in the West, among strangers and worse than strangers. But after all, the home party were soon caring most of all about their concert.
The St Oswald's Choral Society did in fact give a concert every year, but in a very quiet way, aiming only at covering their own expenses, and seeking for no extraneous aid; but this was to be an affair on a very different scale. It had grown up no one knew how, under the influence of Mr. Flowerdew, and of two Miss Birkets, daughters of a gentleman who lived out of the town but in the parish. They were enthusiastic young ladies, about thirty years old, who had been enough at Minsterham to have known 'little Underwood' in his glory there, and to take him up with all their might when they found him with renovated powers in the choral society.
He was 'little Underwood' still, and perhaps would always be so, for in spite of the start of growth he had so eagerly hailed, he would never be tall, but the slenderness of his bones, hands, feet, and general frame, made him look neatly and well made; and he was what every one called, very gentleman-like in appearance. His face had not the beauty of some of the others, the colouring was pale, and there was nothing to catch the eye, till it lighted up into mirth or sweetness; and his manners, from their perfect simplicity and absence of self-consciousness, were always engaging. He was either a cypher, or else he had an inexpressible charm about him. When his violin-playing powers were discovered, the ladies made a point of getting up a piece on the piano in which he was to accompany them, and a prodigious quantity of practice it took. Lance had to walk over to them at least two afternoons in a week. Felix looked on it as patronage, and could not think how he could bear it; but Lance was too simple to perceive patronizing—a petticoat was always a petticoat to him, and a little lingering chatter in their drawing-room was his delight, a few friendly words over the counter enslaved him.