He worked so hard and so merrily the next day in preparing the Christmas-tree for the schools, in spite—foolish fellow!—of warnings, chills, and catches of breath, that at the moment of projection, he was quite overcome by the throng, noise and glare, and forced to beat a hasty retreat to the drawing-room, whither Miss Bridget Hepburn soon pursued him.
Finding him for the first time on the sofa, looking worn out she viewed his assurances that he was really much better as a melancholy delusion, and warned him against being beguiled by false hopes out of that blessed frame of mind. John Harewood, divining what she was about, presently came in to the rescue; not that he could remove her, for she was burning to communicate a semi-confidential piece of information, namely, the intended marriage of Mrs. Fulbert Underwood to Mr. Smiles, whose sickly wife had been dead about a year. The other two sisters were communicating the same intelligence to any one they could catch in anything like privacy all the evening. It was not at all unsatisfactory intelligence, for on the strength of Clement's appointment having caused his resignation, Mr. Smiles had expected him to supply all his most pressing needs, from educating his son to paying for his wife's funeral. The worst of it was that it was hardly credible that Mrs. Fulbert would be so foolish as to bestow her handsome jointure upon him and his seven children; but as he had just taken a curacy in a popular watering-place, there might be attractions; and at any rate, Clement would be exempted from finding funds for his move.
Lance could not help feeling that if to be weary of everything and indifferent to the future were a blessed frame, he had certainly lost it, and it made the subsequent night of pain and distress all the less endurable, as well as the captivity to bed and blisters that ensued; nor was it till Sunday evening that he could return to the painting-room, where all the family collected as they dropped in one by one from Evensong and the subsequent choir-practice, and stood and lounged about in the Sunday gossip, deaf to all to the manner born.
Felix came in last, having been looking at his letters, for he never had time to do more than glance at a few of the more interesting in the morning.
'It is true,' he said quietly.
'What, about Mrs. Fulbert? Has she written?'
'Yes; a great deal about the love she always had for Mr. Smiles's dear little family, and an entreaty to me not to deprive her of the three hundred a year that she was to forfeit by remarriage.'
'Was she? cried Bernard. 'How jolly!'
'So it seems, though I had forgotten it. She keeps all the settlement, of course.'
'I remember about it,' said Clement. 'Her husband begged his father to do something for her; and he detested her so, poor woman, that it went very much against the grain with him, and by way of some solace, he must have made this charge on the estate contingent on her remaining a widow.'