Yet it must not be supposed that she had fully made up her mind to marry Theodore. That Theodore would be very glad to marry her she did not doubt at all. There had been a time—nay, there were moments still—when her visions of herself as Mrs. Theodore Bransby had been blurred by the disturbing element of her cousin Owen's presence. He had shown an attractive appreciation of her attractions; and had, to use Mr. Simpson's phrase, "dangled after his cousin" a good deal. Owen Rivers had reached the age of three and twenty without ever having earned a dinner, and without any serious preparation to enable him to earn one. He had had an expensive education, and had done fairly well at Oxford. His mother had died in his infancy; and his father, a country clergyman, had allowed the young man to lounge away his life at the parsonage, under the specious pretext of taking time to make up his mind what career he would follow. Owen had fished, and shot, and walked, and boated, and cricketed; but he had also read a good deal, having an intellectual appetite at once robust and discriminating. His friends and relatives agreed in thinking him very clever; and, when they reproached him with wasting his fine abilities and leading a purposeless existence, he would answer jestingly that he should be sorry to belie their judgment by subjecting his talents to the dangerous touchstone of action. His father died before he had determined on a profession. But, fortunately as he thought, and unfortunately as was thought by some other persons, including his Aunt Jane, he inherited wherewithal to live without working, and, with a hundred and fifty pounds per annum, could not lack bread and cheese. On his father's death he went to travel on the Continent. He walked wherever walking was possible, carrying his own knapsack, spending little, and seeing much. After more than two years' absence, he returned to England and made his way to Oldchester to see his Aunt Jane, with whom he had maintained an intermittent correspondence. There he found Constance, whom he last remembered as a sallow, self-sufficient schoolgirl, grown to a beautiful young woman. Her sallowness had turned into a creamy pallor, and her self-sufficiency was mitigated, to the masculine judgment, by the depth and softness of a pair of fine dark eyes. Owen, on his part, made a decidedly favourable impression on his cousin. He was not handsome—which mattered little—nor fashionably dressed—which mattered more; but he was well made, and had the grace which belongs to youthful health and strength. And he had, too, that indefinable tone of manner which ensured his recognition as an English gentleman. Constance was by no means insensible to this attraction. If she had not the sentiments which originate the finest manners, she had the perceptions which recognize them. When Mary Raynes and the Burnet girls criticized the roughness of Owen's demeanour, comparing it with Theodore Bransby's "polish," she knew they were wrong. Theodore always behaved with the greatest propriety; but between his manners and Owen's there was the same sort of difference as between a native and a foreigner speaking the same language. The foreigner may often be more accurately correct of the two on minor points, but it is an affair of conscious acquirement, and must inevitably break down now and then; whereas the native talks as naturally as he breathes, and can no more make certain mistakes than an oak tree can put forth willow leaves. Then Owen was very amusing company when he chose to be so,—and he usually did choose to be so when at his Aunt Jane's; and he had good old blood in his veins. This latter fact gave a certain piquancy, in Constance's opinion, to his political theories, which were opposed to the staunch Tory traditions of his family. Constance frequently took her cousin to task on this subject; but with the comfortable conviction to sweeten their controversy that a Rivers could afford to indulge in a little democratic heresy, just as Lord Castlecombe could afford to wear a shabbier coat than any of his tenants.
All these considerations, together with the crowning circumstance that he evidently admired her a good deal, caused Owen to fill a large place in his cousin's mind. She even asked herself seriously more than once if she were in love with Owen, but failed to answer the question decisively. She did, however, arrive at the conviction that falling in love lay much more in one's own power than was commonly supposed; and that no Romeo-and-Juliet destiny could ever inspire her with an ungovernable passion for a man who possessed but a hundred and fifty pounds a year. Mrs. Hadlow had at one time felt some uneasiness—nearly as much on Owen's account as on her daughter's, to say the truth. But she had satisfied herself that there was nothing more than a fraternal kind of regard between the young people—wherein she was wrong; and that there was no danger of their imprudently marrying—wherein she was right.
Mrs. Hadlow had, indeed, made up her mind that Constance would accept Theodore Bransby whenever he should offer himself; and she privately thought it high time that the offer were made. What did Theodore wait for? His means (according to Mrs. Hadlow's estimate of things) were sufficient to allow him to marry at once. But even supposing that he did not choose to marry until he had fairly entered on his career as a barrister, still there ought to be at least some clear understanding between him and Constance. All Oldchester expected to hear of their engagement, and it was not fair to the girl to leave matters in their present uncertain condition. When, at the end of the vacation, young Bransby left Oldchester again without having made any declaration, Mrs. Hadlow was not only surprised, but uneasy; and she opened her mind to her husband on the subject, invading his study at an unusual hour for that purpose.
"Edward," said Mrs. Hadlow, "don't you think that Theodore Barnsby ought to have spoken before he went to town this last time?"
"Spoken, my dear?"
"To Constance; or to us about Constance."
The canon leaned his head on his hand, keeping the thumb of the other hand inserted between the pages of his Plato as a marker, and looked absently at his wife.
"Well? Don't you think he ought?" she repeated impatiently.
The good canon meditated for a few moments. Then he said—
"I—I don't feel quite sure that I understand. What ought he to have said, Jane?"