“I flatter myself I have become rather a favourite with Miss Livingstone since the affair of the horses,” observed Lewis. “I have heard her describe me as ‘a young man of unusual abilities and irreproachable moral character’ to three distinct sets of visitors during the last week.”
“You’ve caught her tone exactly,” returned Annie, laughing; “but it’s very abominable of you to deride my venerable aunt.”
And so they chatted on, Lewis forgetting alike his proud reserve and his dependent position in his pleasure in once again meeting with the kindness and sympathy to which he had been so long a stranger, and Annie engrossed by the joy with which she perceived the ice that care and sorrow had frozen round the heart of her young companion melt before the fascination of her look and manner; and when the phaeton drew up before the ample portals of Broadhurst, it would have been hard to decide which of the two felt most sorry that pleasant drive had come so quickly to an end.
Our train still runs along the Railroad of Life, but a most important station has been passed when Lewis first arrived at the conclusion that he had ceased to dislike Annie Grant.
CHAPTER XXIII.—DE GRANDEVILLE THREATENS A CONFIDENCE AND ELICITS CHARLEY LEICESTER’S IDEAS ON MATRIMONY.
IT was the morning of Twelfth-day, and in Broadhurst’s ancient mansion confusion reigned supreme; for Twelfth-night to be celebrated with high festivities. A grand ball was about to be given to the county, and legions of upholsterers’ men had taken the house by storm, and were zealously employed in turning it out of the windows. Minerva was great upon the occasion; starched to the nth, she rustled through the apartments like an austere whirlwind, striking an icy terror into the hearts of the stoutest workmen, and leading the chief upholsterer himself the life of a convicted felon on the treadmill—solitary confinement, implying separation from Minerva, would have been a boon to that harassed tradesman. Whatever he put up she instantly had taken down; all his suggestions she violently opposed; he never gave an order that she did not contradict; when he was downstairs she required him at the top of the house; if he appeared without his hat, she took him out of doors. Foxe’s Martyrs would seem a mere book of sports beside a faithful chronicle of all that upholsterer suffered on the occasion at the hands of Minerva Livingstone. Had he not been endowed with remarkable tenacity of life, ere he had set that house in order he would have died.
Amongst others of the dispossessed, Charley Leicester, having retreated from room to room before the invaders, at last, fairly driven out, was fain to seek refuge in the garden. In this extremity he betook himself to a certain terrace-walk, where he trusted to find sunshine and quiet. Having, as he fondly imagined, secured these necessary ingredients to his happiness, he was proceeding to recruit exhausted nature with a mild cigar, when a footstep was heard approaching, and immediately afterwards the erect and portly form of the De Grandeville hove in sight and bore down upon him. Now it must be known that these two gentlemen regarded each other with very different feelings—Leicester, albeit by no means given to discovering faults of character in his acquaintances, could not but perceive the absurd self-consequence and pompous pride which were so palpably displayed in De Grandeville’s every look and action, and while this revolted his good taste and produced in him a passive feeling of dislike, the style of conversation usually adopted by the redoubtable Marmaduke, which, however it might begin, invariably ended in some form of self-glorification, actively bored him. Accordingly, it was with anything but a feeling of satisfaction that he now witnessed his approach. De Grandeville, on the other hand, looked up to Leicester on account of his connection with the peerage, and knowing his popularity among the best set of men about town, regarded him as an oracle on all points of etiquette and bienséance. Being, therefore, at that moment in the act of revolving in his anxious mind a most weighty matter on which he required good advice, Charley was the man of all others he most wished to meet with. Marching vigorously onward he soon reached the spot where, half-sitting, half-lying, on the broad top of a low stone balustrade, Leicester was ruminating over his cigar. Having halted immediately in front of his victim, De Grandeville raised his hand to his forehead in a military salute, which manouvre, acquired partly in jest, partly in earnest, had now become habitual to him.
“Ar—enjoying a weed? eh! Mr. Leicester?” he began. “ ’Pon my word, you’ve selected a most picturesque spot for your bivouac. If it’s not against the standing orders to smoke here, I’ll join you in a cigar, for—ar—to tell you the truth, I rather want five minutes’ conversation with you.”