‘You have been more prescient than I,’ said Lady Everingham, ‘perhaps because I was thinking too much of some one else.’
‘It seems to me an union which all must acknowledge perfect. I hardly know which I love best. I have had my suspicions a long time; and when Eustace refused to go to the moors with us, though I said nothing, I was convinced.’
‘At any rate,’ said Lady Everingham, sighing, with a rather smiling face, ‘we are kinsfolk, Mr. Coningsby; though I would gladly have wished to have been more.’
‘Were those your thoughts, dear lady? Ever kind to me! Happiness,’ he added, in a mournful tone, ‘I fear can never be mine.’
‘And why?’
‘Ah! ‘tis a tale too strange and sorrowful for a day when, like Seged, we must all determine to be happy.’
‘You have already made me miserable.’
‘Here comes a group that will make you gay,’ said Coningsby as he moved on. Edith and the Wallingers, accompanied by Lord Beaumanoir, Mr. Melton, and Sir Charles Buckhurst, formed the party. They seemed profuse in their congratulations to Lady Everingham, having already learnt the intelligence from her brother.
Coningsby stopped to speak to Lady St. Julians, who had still a daughter to marry. Both Augustina, who was at Coningsby Castle, and Clara Isabella, who ought to have been there, had each secured the right man. But Adelaide Victoria had now appeared, and Lady St. Julians had a great regard for the favourite grandson of Lord Monmouth, and also for the influential friend of Lord Vere and Sir Charles Buckhurst. In case Coningsby did not determine to become her son-in-law himself, he might counsel either of his friends to a judicious decision on an inevitable act.
‘Strawberries and cream?’ said Lord Eskdale to Mr. Ormsby, who seemed occupied with some delicacies.