‘And very well she has done it, too,’ returned Aunt Jane. ‘Only now and then he gets a holiday, and then the real creature breaks out again. But it is much better so. He would not have been of half so much good otherwise.’
Lady Merrifield looked from one to the other, but said no more, for all the young folks were round her; but every one was so much tired, children, servants, and all, that prayers were read early, and all went to their rooms. Yet, tired as she was, Lady Merrifield sat on in her sister Jane’s room, in her dressing-gown, talking according to another revival of olden time.
‘What did Ada mean about Rotherwood? Isn’t he happy?’
‘Oh yes, very happy; and it is much the best thing that could have happened. It is only another of the proofs that life is very long, especially for men.’
‘Come, now, tell me all about it. You don’t know how often I feel as if I had been buried and dug up again.’
‘There are things one can’t write about. Poor fellow! he never really wanted to marry anybody but Phyllis.’
‘No! you don’t mean it! I never knew it.’
‘No, for you were in the utmost parts of the earth; and he was very good, so that I don’t believe honest Phyl herself, or any one without eyes, guessed it; but he had it all out with our father, who begged him, almost on that allegiance he had always shown, to abstain from beginning about it. You see, not only are they first cousins, but our mother and his father both were consumptive, and there was dear Claude even then regularly breaking down every winter, and Ada needing to be looked after like a hothouse plan. I’m sure, when I think of the last generation of Devereuxes, I wonder so many of us have been tough enough to weather the dangerous age; and there had been an alarm or two about Rotherwood himself. Well, he was very good, half from obedience, half from being convinced that it would be a selfish thing, and especially from being wholly convinced that Phyl’s feelings were not stirred. That was the way I came to know about it, for papa took me out for a drive in the old gig to ask what I thought about her heart, and I could truly and honestly say she had never found it, cared for Rotherwood just as she did for Reggie, and was not the sort to think whether a man was attentive to her. Besides, she was eighteen, and he thirty-one, and she thought him venerable. I believe, if he had asked her then, she might have taken him (because Cousin Rotherwood wished it), but she would have had to fall in love in the second place instead of the first. Well, he was very good, poor old fellow, except that by way of taking himself off, and diverting his mind, he went dear-stalking with such unnecessary vehemence that a Scotch mist was very nearly the death of him, and he discovered that he had as many lungs as other people. If you could only have seen our dear old father then, how distressed and how guilty he felt, and how he used to watch Phyllis, and examine Alethea and me as to whether she seemed more than reasonably concerned for Rotherwood had come and hit the right nail on the head he might have carried her off.’
‘But he didn’t.’
‘No; for, you see, he was ill enough to convince himself, as well as other people, that he was a consumptive Devereux after all.’