Callous and unhesitating as he was, nevertheless Mr. Guyon felt considerable apprehension about the impending explanation with Katharine. No material disagreement had ever taken place between his daughter and himself. He had always had a sense of Katharine's intellectual superiority which had governed him in certain respects; and an unexpressed unwillingness to rouse a temper which he felt a tacit conviction he could not rule had restrained him from opposing her unnecessarily; so that his daughter had always given him credit for much more amiability and complaisance than he actually possessed. He was not afraid of her in any actively restraining sense, or he would not have entertained such a design as that he was now prosecuting against her; but he was afraid of a war of words with her; he was afraid that her keenness might lead her to suspicion; above all, he dreaded her girlish ignorance, her disregard of wealth, when wealth only was what he had to urge upon her acceptance.
The announcement of Gordon Frere's departure was the cause of almost as profound an emotion to Mr. Guyon as to his daughter. To her it meant the extinction of hope, the blighting of joy, the outraging of love and pride, the awakening of passionate anger and agonising grief. To him it meant the termination of a period of most unpleasant suspense, during which he did not dare to take a step towards the furtherance of his plans, lest at any moment they might collapse, and defeat insure detection. But all had turned out rightly for him; he was safe; the young man--"the biggest fool of the lot" Mr. Guyon called him, with coarse contempt for the pliability of his victim--had received his sentence in silence and without protest, and had left England; a circumstance beyond Mr. Guyon's hopes, which had extended only to his keeping out of Katharine's way until the scheme should have succeeded.
On his return from the dinner at Greenwich, which had been rather tedious, and during which Robert Streightley's abstracted look and dispirited manner had excited Mr. Guyon's scorn and apprehension, inducing him to think that if there were much delay Robert might become troublesome and scrupulous after all, he, too, read in the evening journals the announcement which had come upon his daughter like the stroke of doom. Unmixed satisfaction was rapidly succeeded by a determination to act at once. He had seen as little as possible of Katharine for some time, pleading engagements and business when the rapid "thinning" of London prevented his procuring the presence of a third person to insure him against a tête-à-tête. But he had watched her; he had observed her restlessness, her anxiety, her abstraction and indifference. He had noted the shadow on her beauty, he had heard the harsh tone which now sounded in her voice, the unreal ring of her laugh,--had noted them without one touch of pity or hesitation, and been satisfied with the result. He recognised grief in all these symptoms, but he saw still more anger, pride, and defiance. Every thing that he observed gave him encouragement; and Lady Henmarsh, who did not know the whole truth, but had guessed at something very like it, had made satisfactory reports. She understood Katharine much better than her father understood her, and had played the irritating game, in his interests, with a charming air of unconsciousness, and complete success. The first thing to be done was to see Lady Henmarsh; and as she was going to take Sir Timothy out of town in a day or two, no time was to be lost. Mr. Guyon could be an early man when it suited his convenience, and it happened to do so just then. He presented himself at Lady Henmarsh's breakfast-table, much to the surprise and a little to the confusion of "cousin Hetty," who had never quite lost the habit of liking to look well for "cousin Ned," and was conscious that she might have looked better than on this occasion. But "cousin Ned" had neither time nor inclination for the revival of ci-devant sentiment, and Lady Henmarsh soon perceived that "business" engrossed him wholly.
"My dearest Kate," said Lady Henmarsh, as, three hours later, she entered Miss Guyon's room, and found her up and dressed, indeed, but sitting icily by her bedroom-window, and looking as though a month's illness had robbed her eyes of their lustre and her cheek of its bloom,--"what is wrong with you? Clarke tried to prevent my coming upstairs, but of course I knew you would see me. My dear girl, you look shockingly!"
"Do I?" said Katharine, forcing a smile; "I feel wretched enough. It is only the heat, I suppose, and the season. It is time for every one to leave town."
"Every one seems to think so," returned Lady Henmarsh; "except yourself and ourselves, almost every one is gone. I had such a number of callers yesterday, I was quite sick of them. So sorry you could not come round, dear; but you did quite right to keep quiet, if you did not feel well. By the way, Mr. Mostyn--I must not say your admirer, I suppose; but the gentleman who kindly permits you to admire him--came in while the Daventrys were there, and he looked quite sentimental when your message came. He actually condescended to ask why you did not go to Mrs. Tresillian's ball, and to say, but for Miss Guyon's absence, he should have pronounced it the best ball of the season. You know his formal way. I am sorry you missed it, Kate; they all agreed that it was a brilliant affair; and Lily Daventry was in ecstasies about it. To be sure she's new to balls; but how she did go on about Coote and Tinney's band and Gordon Frere's waltzing!"
Katharine winced. Lady Henmarsh played with a ring-stand, took up the rings one by one and examined them, keeping a close watch on the girl as she talked on.
"What a goose that girl is, to be sure, but so pretty! and if the men admire her so much, though she has not any sense, she is as well without it. What a flirt she is too! It amused me to watch her trying her ringlets and her attitudes upon Mr. Mostyn. Now that Gordon Frere--as great a flirt as herself--is out of the way, she tries her hand upon him; and he is so horribly vain, that though he was at the Tresillians' and saw her flirtation with Frere, he actually believes she is quite captivated. Why do you wear an opal ring, Kate? you were not born in October; it's unlucky, my dear."
"Is it?" said Katharine languidly. "I did not know. Are the Daventrys going to Leyton?"
"Yes, they start to-morrow. By the bye, I was so surprised at Gordon Frere's appointment; weren't you? I never heard him mention it, and yet it appears it had been settled a long time. I am sorry I did not see him when he called."