There was one person, however, in whom she confided, and that one was Ethel Hardcastle. Maud’s love-affair, or rather the matter between her and Lewis, could not by its very nature be kept a secret. Everybody knew that her choice had to be made, and Ethel was favoured by the information that she meant to refuse her cousin.
For a sudden idea had entered Maud’s head. She liked Lewis, though she would not marry him, and she liked Ethel very much; and it seemed to her that the two were just made for one another. Lewis was sufficiently clever and good-looking to please the fancy of a simple-minded, warm-hearted girl; and Ethel, with her plump, pink-and-white prettiness and confiding disposition, would be the very wife for him—far more really suitable than Maud herself, who was much too wayward and independent.
Ethel had confided all her history to Maud almost at the first. Her father was in India, and had married again; but she and Horace had inherited their mother’s fortune, and had about three hundred a year each. Miss Marjory had given them a home for the past six years, so that much of their money had accumulated; and Ethel would be a well-dowered wife for a man of not too ambitious a mould.
Maud had enlisted Ethel’s sympathies on behalf of Lewis without any difficulty; and when she saw him, she was duly impressed by his appearance, and much touched by the melancholy glances he cast at the merry, hard-hearted Maud.
Maud, however, was very gracious to him; and when the luncheon was ended, invited him to ride with her and Ethel, which proposition he accepted with alacrity. In fact, the two ladies between them made themselves so agreeable, that he found it hard to tear himself away; and when he finally did so, it was on the understanding that he was to come up the following morning to play at tennis with them, Maud having challenged him and Ethel to play against her, single-handed.
Ethel’s artless admiration for Lewis, after his departure, afforded Maud great satisfaction. Ethel secretly wondered how it was that some people were so hard to please, but pulled herself up with the reflection that Maud was of course too lovely and delightful to be easily satisfied, and she could afford to pick and choose.
‘I shouldn’t be half so fastidious,’ she said to herself. ‘I’m not pretty or clever, or anything like that; and then no young men ever do come to Whitbury. It is a stupid place.’
Maud talked a great deal of Lewis, and his kindness of heart and various good points, and Ethel listened with avidity.
‘I’m getting quite an old matchmaker,’ said Maud to herself. ‘How ridiculous it seems trying to make over one’s cast-off lovers; but I should like Lewis to get a nice wife. I think he likes Ethel, and I’m sure she is taken by him. I can’t see why they shouldn’t marry and be happy, and then I shall have Lewis off my mind. For I’ve not been quite easy about the way I’ve kept him hanging on, though that’s less my fault than the force of circumstances.’
Maud’s friendliness to Lewis had not passed unnoticed. Miss Marjory’s sharp eyes had at once detected it, and Mrs. Lorraine had felt a passing uneasiness, as she observed the gracious manner her niece had adopted towards the cousin, whose fate was trembling in the balance. Tor, if he observed anything, did not trouble his head much about it. Such perfect sympathy existed between him and Maud that he was certain she never meant to marry Lewis Belassis.