Meanwhile, every week May received a letter from Owen, forwarded by Mrs. Dobbs. The latter had restricted the correspondence to one letter a week on each side. Owen wrote very joyously. His work was easy—too easy, he said; and he was constantly seeking opportunities to be useful to his employer. Mr. Bragg he pronounced to be an excellent master: clearheaded in his commands, and reasonable in his exactions. He seemed to approve of his secretary so far; and although he was rather taciturn, and not prone to encourage sanguine expectations, yet Owen began to have good hope that Mr. Bragg would not turn him adrift when the three months' engagement should be at an end.
May now became decidedly more popular in society than she had been during the height of the season. Happiness, like sunshine, beautifies common things; and the new brightness of her outlook on it was reflected by the world around her. That feeling which she had expressed in writing to her grandmother—the forlorn feeling of a child who, in the midst of some gay spectacle, wearily cries to go home—had disappeared. She knew that when the curtain should fall on the puppet-show in Vanity Fair, her own true love was waiting to welcome her.
Sometimes she speculated on how Aunt Pauline would take the revelation of her attachment to Owen Rivers. That she should have had any doubt on the subject proved her ignorance of Aunt Pauline's views. Mrs. Dormer-Smith would not for the world have expressed to May any gross or sordid sentiments about marriage. She had not the slightest idea that she entertained any such herself! But, as she had long ago said, there are many things—never put into words—which "girls brought up in a certain monde learn by instinct." Now in that kind of instinct May was greatly deficient.
May reflected that her aunt had spurned Theodore Bransby's proposal on the avowed ground of his being "nobody." And she understood—or thought she understood—that Aunt Pauline accorded a tangible existence only to such persons as could be proved by genealogical records to have had a certain number of great-grandfathers. Now, thus considered, Owen was very undeniably and solidly "somebody." He was poor, certainly; but how often had Aunt Pauline mingled her plaintive regrets with Mrs. Griffin's about the increasing worship of Mammon which vulgarized London society! And although Aunt Pauline sometimes showed a deference for wealth which was rather puzzling in the face of these utterances, yet May observed that her personal liking and admiration were given on very different grounds. Witness her regard for Constance Hadlow!
Mrs. Dormer-Smith even kept up an intermittent correspondence with that young lady. Constance's letters were precisely of the kind which Mrs. Dormer-Smith delighted in—budgets of social gossip selected with unerring tact. Constance had returned to Oldchester, but she did not spend many consecutive weeks in her parents' house, being invited to visit among "the élite of the county aristocracy," as Mrs. Simpson phrased it. Miss Hadlow had, in fact, achieved what might be called, all things considered, a brilliant social position. Her visit to Glengowrie had been a great success. She had made a conquest of the duchess; and also—though that was comparatively of small consequence—of the duke. Mrs. Griffin was charmed that her protégée had done her so much honour; and promised to take her into society the following season, if Canon and Mrs. Hadlow would give her leave to come to town. Indeed, Mrs. Griffin began seriously to revolve in her mind whether she could not contrive to marry Charley Rivers's grand-daughter, and secure her a fine establishment. Mrs. Griffin was proud of her achievements in that line, which, though few, were brilliant. Like a certain famous Italian singing-master, who was wont in his old age to decline unpromising pupils on the ground that it was not worth his while to make seconde donne, Mrs. Griffin practised only the higher branches of matchmaking; and refused to fly her falcons at anything under twenty thousand a year—or a peerage.
What made Miss Hadlow's letters particularly interesting to Mrs. Dormer-Smith at this time, was that the former was frequently staying in the neighbourhood of Combe Park, and occasionally met Lord Castlecombe and Lucius, whom she reported to be constantly ailing—as, indeed, he had been since before his brother's death. But his state did not seem to inspire any immediate apprehension. And Constance even said a word now and then about "creaking wheels," and intimated her belief that Mr. Lucius Cheffington would probably outlive many more robust-looking persons.
But it was not only these polite chronicles which kept the Dormer-Smith household informed as to the doings of Oldchester people. Mrs. Dobbs, of course, wrote frequently to her grandchild. The saddest news which she had to give May was the continuous and rapid decline of Mr. Bransby's health. Theodore was still away from home, Mrs. Dobbs wrote, and she commented severely on his heartless neglect of his father. She had learned through Mrs. Simpson that old Martin Bransby showed great anxiety for his son's return; and it was reported that he had caused a letter to be written, telling Theodore that he desired to speak with him, and urging him to come home without delay.
In the first days of December the end came. Martin Bransby died—rather suddenly at the last—and his eldest son was not with him. On being telegraphed to he arrived in Oldchester with the utmost possible despatch—but too late to see his father alive.
"People are very sorry for the widow and her children," wrote Mrs. Dobbs; "for it's beginning to be said now that they're left rather badly off, and that the bulk of everything will go to Theodore. I don't know any facts, one way or the other; but I do know that foolish folk cackle louder over a grave than almost anywhere else. So we may hope things are not so bad with that pretty, gentle woman as Oldchester gossip makes out."
One of May's first thoughts on reading this letter was, "How grieved Owen will be!" She grieved herself for the kindly old man who had always been good to her, and for the grief of those who loved him. And she incurred a mild rebuke from her aunt by appearing at a dinner party that evening with pale cheeks and red eyelids.