“Well, my dear, it was Major Clare. He said that he was going to return shortly to his brother’s, and would be glad to take any message or parcel for you. A most agreeable person.”
There was a kind of consciousness in her mother’s manner which annoyed Emberance extremely. She was greatly surprised at Major Clare’s visit, and set it down to a possible desire to reopen relations with Katharine.
“I dare say he might like to have a message to take to Kingsworth,” she said in a tone intended to convey to her friends and to her mother that his interest was in another direction. “Where is he staying?” she added; “how did he come here?”
“He was staying, he said, in the neighbourhood, and would call again. Such pleasing manners!”
The Major had evidently created a favourable impression, and Emberance could not help being secretly flattered that he had sought her out, even with a view to renew his relations with Katharine.
The Major did call again, and Emberance also met him at Canon Kingsworth’s. He was very agreeable, and said very little about Kate, rather renewing that sort of manner which in the early days of Kingsworth had made Emberance doubt of his real intentions. She perceived that all her relations, including the Canon, regarded his appearance as significant; and indeed that excellent old gentleman would probably not have regarded a young lady’s change of mind towards a not very eligible suitor as a matter of great regret. And Emberance knew herself to be charming, the Major confirmed in her that sweet sense of the power of attraction, which is more intoxicating to a girl than the knowledge of beauty or any other personal advantage. It would take too long to tell all the little incidents, all the words, and half the glances that carried a vain man a little further than he had intended, and went far to turn the head of a vain girl.
Emberance looked prettier and took more trouble with her dress than usual during this important fortnight. But if she had a vain head she had an honest heart, and Major Clare’s former attentions to Katharine could not be forgotten. It was flattering to be preferred to her heiress-cousin; but still he had won Kate’s affections first, and Emberance never really contemplated his urging any serious suit upon her. Only it was pleasant to be known as the object of his attentions.
“I am a foolish, horrid girl,” thought Emberance, “and it is a mean thing to care about, but that’s all, and I am sure they are all mistaken in fancying he has any serious intentions. Besides, as if I would listen to any one but Malcolm. I never, never will.”
She was walking by herself home from the High Street, where she had gone to buy some little bit of finery, and down the lane that led by a short cut to the suburban district where she lived. It was only a dull lane, narrow and dirty, with a wall on one side and a close-clipped hedge on the other; but Emberance always chose it because it was here that she and Malcolm had met on the day when he had told her of his love and of his poverty, and asked her if she could bear to wait while he made his home, if she could put up with the weariness and the waiting that fell to the lot of a poor man’s betrothed.
“Oh, I can!” Emberance had answered warmly, and Love Lane or Hatchard’s Lane, as it was called, according to the tastes of the speaker, always brought her promise to her mind. She stopped a minute in her walk, and looked over the hedge across the cabbages in Hatchard’s market garden, and said to herself,—