'Shall I offer Master Ratton to those two?' asked Felix of Robina, 'or is it too barefaced?'
'As yet, till the elders know.'
'Then you must come with me in the basket, Bob. I shall make Clem drive the waggonette home; he knows the ground better than I do.'
There was a good deal of summer lightning all the way home: but Lady Caergwent, tightly packed into the waggonette, never started at the shimmering sheets of pale light. Nay, she loved them all the rest of her life.
And the arrowhead, which she found in a jug outside her door in the morning, received full justice, and was in fact the last botanical specimen ever added to her collection.
The proverbial 'dull elf' alone could fail to figure the ensuing days, with the semi-concealment of what everybody knew, but no one was supposed to know before the authorities. How Lady Caergwent sat up at untimely hours, pouring her heart out to Robina; how Bernard became melancholy and misanthropical, when cruelly snubbed by Lord Ernest—'I could have had some pity on him,' was the reply to a remonstrance, 'but for that speech about his brothers.' Angela, on the other hand, made such endeavours to rescue poor Lord Ernest from being bored, that Cherry, in constant fear of her exposing herself, told her how matters stood, when she became furious and scornful at his supposed weariness of toil, and the succumbing of his resolution. Clement endured it much better, being quite willing that any one but the clergy should marry, and knowing Lord Ernest well enough to believe that he would only make the lady a stronger pillar of the Church.
After a few fresh touches had given a new and different reading to the portrait, and after a Sunday of bliss that cost Will and Robina some gulps of envious philosophy, there was a return to the Hammonds, and a tremendous croquet party to kill off all the neighbourhood before Mrs. Umfraville's return.
That lady's thankful comfort was only alloyed by sorrow that her Colonel could not see the fulfilment of his chief wish, while she felt that the four years' estrangement had improved both in manliness and womanliness, in forbearance and humility, and the matrimonial balance would be far easier of adjustment.
Of course invitations and promises to attend the wedding were made in the heat of the moment, and these were kept in October by Felix and Geraldine as well as Robina, who a second time dazzled Lady Vanderkist by her appearance in the list of bridesmaids. It was the last thing before she, with the whole De la Poer party, went abroad for the winter for the sake of her little delicate pupil, Susan, who had been ordered to spend the winter in the Riviera; and ever considerate, when Lord De la Poer asked his daughter Grace's Mr. Pemberton to join the travellers at Christmas, he also asked William Harewood; and Robina was the best off, for the curate could not come when the tutor could.
Mrs. Umfraville made a great deal of Mr. and Miss Underwood at Caergwent, and they much enjoyed their visit; but it was always a subject of regret that these outer interests seemed to make Lance feel at a greater distance from them. Something was amiss, though it was not easy to make out what it was, and he never allowed that he was uncomfortable, nor weary of his bicycle or of Mrs. Froggatt.