Barbara looked astonished, and would have spoken; but her aunt had risen from her chair and turned her back on her, moving towards the dressing-table. So she mechanically rang the bell, and left the room.
With the result of this conversation Churchill was made acquainted as he and Barbara bent together over a large stereoscope in the drawing-room before dinner. In a few hurried words, interspersed with ejaculations of admiration at the views, uttered in a much louder tone, Barbara conveyed to her lover that their project would meet with no assistance from her aunt, even if that old lady did not actively and violently oppose it. Churchill shrugged his shoulders on hearing this, and looked somewhat serious and annoyed; but as she rose to go in to dinner, Barbara pressed his hand, and looking into her face, he saw her eyes brighten and her lip curl with an expression of triumph, and he recognised in an instant that her energy had risen at the prospect of opposition, and that her determination to have her own way had strengthened rather than lessened from her aunt's treatment.
There was an accession to the dinner-table that day in the person of Mr. Schröder, a German long resident in England, and partner in the great house of Schröder, Stutterheim, Hinterhaus, and Company, bankers and brokers, which had branches and ramifications in all the principal cities of the world. No one would have judged Gustav Schröder to have been a keen financier and a consummate master of his business from his personal appearance. He was between fifty-five and sixty years old, heavy and dull-looking, with short, stubbly, iron-gray hair, dull boiled eyes, and thin dry lips, which he was constantly sucking. He was clumsy in his movements, and very taciturn; but though he spoke little, even to Miss Townshend, by whom he was seated, he seemed to derive intense satisfaction in gazing at her with a proprietorial kind of air, which nearly goaded Lyster, sitting directly opposite to them, to desperation. Upon his evidently uncomfortable state Captain Lyster was rallied with great humour by old Miss Lexden, who, however much she may have been inwardly annoyed, showed no signs of trouble. She opined that Captain Lyster must be in love; that some shepherdess on the neighbouring downs, some Brighton poissarde, must have captivated him, and she was delighted at it, and it would do him good; and in spite of Lyster's protestations--which, however, he soon gave up when he found he had the trouble of repeating them--the old lady launched out into a very unusual tirade on her part in favour of early marriages, of love-matches made for love's sake alone, which frequently turned out the happiest, "didn't they, Mr. Churchill?" At which question, Churchill, who was dreamily looking across the table, and thinking how artistically Barbara's head was posed on her neck, and what a lovely ear she had, stammered an inarticulate and inappropriate reply.
But when dinner was over, and the post-prandial drink finished, and the coffee consumed in the drawing-room, and the "little music" played, and the ladies had retired to rest (Barbara, in her good night to Churchill, giving one reassuring hand-pressure, and looking as saucily triumphant as before), and the men had exchanged their dress coats for comfortable velvet lounging-jackets, and had, in most cases, dispensed with their white cravats; when Sir Marmaduke had nodded his farewell for the night, Churchill, instead of joining the party in the smoke-room, made his way to the old gentleman's quarters, and knocked at the dressing-room door. Bidden to come in, he found Sir Marmaduke in his dressing-gown and slippers, seated before a fire (for the evenings were beginning to be chilly), with a glass of cold brandy-and-water on a little table at his right hand, and the evening paper on his knee.
"Holloa!" was the old gentleman's salutation; "what's in the wind now? There must be something the matter when a young fellow like you, instead of joining in the nonsense downstairs, comes to hunt out an old fogey like me. What is it?"
"Business, Sir Marmaduke," commenced Churchill; "I want five minutes' business talk with you."
"God bless my soul!" growled Sir Marmaduke; "business at this time of night, and with me! You can't talk without something to drink, you know. Here, Gumble; another tumbler and the brandy for Mr. Churchill. Why don't you talk to Stone, my dear fellow? he manages all my business, you know."
"Yes, yes, Sir Marmaduke; but this is for you, and you alone. I came to tell you that I am going to be married."
"Ay, ay! no news to me, though you think it is. What's his name, Beresford, told us all about it. Well, well, deuced risky business; wish you well through it, and all that kind of thing. Don't congratulate you, because that's all humbug. But why specially announce it to me?"
"Simply because it is your due. I met the lady in this house, and the first introduction was through you. I don't know what nonsense Mr. Beresford may have been spreading, but the real fact is that I am going to be married to Barbara Lexden. Now you see my motive."