[CHAPTER VII.]
HESTER'S DEBUT.
The judgment passed by Robert Streightley on Hester Gould, when he had critically examined her bearing under the novel and trying circumstances of her heiress-ship, was amply borne out by her subsequent conduct. She was a decided success; and though totally unknown to the members of the great world in which she had now taken her place, so that they had no opportunity of comparing her as she was in the present with what she had been in the past, her simplicity of manners, her unassuming tranquillity, as free from deprecation as from assertion, received a tribute of genuine admiration. Miss Gould was as much alive to the little touch of impertinence in this general sentiment as she was to its usefulness and agreeability; but she enjoyed the latter, and did not resent the former.
"They are wonderfully kind and polite, and all that," she said one day to Lady Henmarsh, while she was entering a long list of new names and addresses in her visiting-book; "but it amuses me a little to observe that not one of them can quite conceal her surprise at discovering that I look and behave like a lady. How I delight in such naïveté! They let me see, without the least disguise, that they expect me to be vulgar and underbred, but visit me because I am rich and certified by you."
"It's the way of the world, my dear Hester," said her friend; "and neither you nor I will change it, be assured."
"I don't want to change it, for my part," said Hester; "it suits me very well as it is."
This gay colloquy took place shortly after Miss Gould had taken possession of her handsome and perfectly-appointed house at Palace Gardens. The programme agreed upon at Middlemeads had been faithfully carried out, and the intercourse between Portland Place and Palace Gardens was frequent and affectionate. Miss Gould demeaned herself towards Robert and his wife with exemplary tact and propriety. Not the keenest and closest observer could have divined that she possessed a knowledge of the affairs of the one wholly unshared by the other, and that she had succeeded, by minute investigation and the art of inductive reasoning, at an understanding of the means by which the marriage which had thwarted her plans, and given her the first shock she had ever experienced of the humiliation of defeat, had been brought about, almost as clear as that possessed by the principals in the transaction. The firmness, the indifference, and the decision of Hester Gould's character had much attraction for Katharine, who found pleasure and amusement in watching that young lady's method of dealing with her novel position, and to whose proud nature the coolness and self-possession of Hester were peculiarly congenial. They were not confidential with each other; but then, how could they have been so? Katharine had a secret in her life whose concealment had been of such immense importance to her that she had taken the one step which determines a woman's whole existence in order to secure that concealment. Outside that she had no confidences to bestow. On Hester's side there was still less frankness in their intercourse; but she would not have been confidential with Katharine, had there been no hidden link between them; she had never trusted any one fully. The nearest approach she had ever made or permitted to a confidential intimacy had been in Mr. Thacker's case; and she had begun to repent of even that limited démarche lately, since that gentleman had hinted at the hopes to which it had given rise.
"I might have found out all he has told me for myself, if I had only waited," she said in vexed soliloquy; "if I had only had patience, I need not have wanted him at all, and now there's no saying how troublesome he may think fit to be."
In this misgiving Hester Gould was entirely mistaken, and her entertaining it showed that she had not read Mr. Thacker with her accustomed thoroughness and infallibility. Daniel knew when Miss Gould refused him, in the matter-of-fact and reasonable fashion she had done, that she was perfectly in earnest, clearly in the right, and immutable in her resolution. He had no more notion of annoying her with a renewal of his addresses than he had of resenting their rejection. He must have liked her very much, and have seen many advantages in addition to its pecuniary attractions in the scheme of such a marriage; for Mr. Daniel Thacker was as little of a marrying-man as any individual in London, but he was quite incapable of such a bêtise as persisting in an unwelcome suit, or exhibiting, indeed of feeling, the slightest offence. Hester Gould was the sort of woman, being an heiress, whom it would have been pleasant and advisable to marry; but as such an arrangement was not practicable, he fell back upon the other and less hazardous alternative--that of fostering and preserving confidential relations with her. If she was not to be his wife--and he knew the moment she said "no" that that was not to be--she should remain his very good friend, in the real meaning of the term. He believed he had found out what her game had been in the past (that game she had lost, as it seemed to him, by waiting too confidently); he acknowledged that he did not know the nature of that which she meant to play in the future; but if any one was ever to know it, he would be that person, with her consent or without it. He had felt at once the change that had come over her after his luckless proposal; he had discerned her imperfect appreciation of his savoir faire; but he was neither offended nor afraid. He knew he could safely trust his own manner and time to convince her that he had accepted her decision as final, that she had no importunity to fear on his part.
The result had fully justified Mr. Thacker's anticipations, and his relations with Hester were permanently established on a footing of as much mutual reliance as was possible to the nature of either, and the frank interchange of mutual good services. Mr. Thacker was unfeignedly pleased when he learned from the voice of rumour that the shipowner's heiress was becoming quite the fashion, and when he perceived by her brightened expression, her fresher colour, and the added vivacity of her manner and bearing, that Miss Gould entered with sincere enjoyment into the pleasures within her reach. A youth of well-concealed ambition, of self-repression, of toil, had not hardened and deadened and narrowed her, as it might have done a weaker nature; there was no active poison of cynicism in her knowledge of the world; and her coolheadedness, while it secured her from deception, did not err on the joyless side of utter disbelief. She enjoyed life as a connoisseur, not as an enthusiast--as an epicure, not as a gourmand; but she did enjoy it both well and wisely.