I can't make John out. At dinner he was just as if nothing had happened; but at all events I'm glad I've refused Mr. Haycock; so I shall read Frank's note over once more and then go to bed.
CHAPTER XIV.
I need quote no more from my diary, as the next few days offered no incident worthy of recording to break the monotony of our life at Dangerfield Hall. Drearier than ever it was, and more especially to me; for I felt that, although undeclared, there was "war to the knife" between myself, my aunt, and cousin. The latter scarcely spoke to me at all; and my aunt, whose defeat was rankling bitterly in her heart, merely took such sullen notice of me as was absolutely necessitated by the laws of hospitality and the usages of society. Poor Aunt Deborah required to be kept very quiet and free from all worries and annoyances. "The more she slept," the doctor said, "the sooner she would get well enough to move to London for further advice;" so I had not even her to talk to—there was no hunting—the frost got harder and harder—that obstinate weather-cock over the stables kept veering from north to north-east—the grooms went to exercise wrapped up in greatcoats and shawl handkerchiefs, and stayed out as short a time as was compatible with the mildest stable discipline; there would be no change of the moon for a week, and it was obvious that I should have but little use for Brilliant and White Stockings before our return to town.
Oh! the hopelessness of a real bitter black frost coming on early in the season, especially when you are not at your own home and your time is limited; to get up morning after morning with the faint hope that the change may have come at last; to see the dry slates and the clear horizon and the iron-bound earth, and to ascertain in your own proper person that the water gets colder and colder every day. You puzzle over the almanac till your eyes ache, and study the thermometer till you get a crick in your neck. You watch the smoke from every farmhouse and cottage within your ken, and still, after curling high up into the pure, rarefied atmosphere, it floats hopelessly away to the southward and corroborates the odious dog-vane that you fondly imagined might have got stuck in its northerly direction. You walk out and ask every labourer you meet whether he "does not think we are going to have a change?" The man looks up from his work, wonders at your solicitude, opines "the gentry folk have queer ways," but answers honestly enough, according to his convictions, in the negative—perhaps giving some local reasons for his opinion, which, if an old man, he will tell you he has never known to fail. Lastly, you quarrel with every one of your non-hunting friends, whose unfeeling observations on "fine seasonable weather" and "healthy, bracing frosts" you feel to be brutal in the extreme.
How I hated the frost at Dangerfield! My only chance of meeting with Frank Lovell was out hunting. I had written him an answer to his note (I have often heard Aunt Horsingham say that nothing is so inexcusable as not to answer a letter), and I had no possible means of delivering it. I could not put it in the bag, for my aunt keeps the key. I did not like to entrust it to any of the servants, and my own maid is the last person in whose power I should choose to place myself. I did once think of asking Cousin John to give it to Frank, and throwing myself on kind, good John's generosity, and confessing everything to him, and asking for his advice; but somehow I could not bring myself to it. If he had been my brother, nothing would have been easier; but John is only a cousin, and one or two little things of late had made me suspect that he liked me even better than cousins generally do; so altogether I thought I would leave it alone—besides, John was going off to shoot pheasants in Wales. The third morning of the frost he came down to breakfast in a suit of wondrous apparel that I knew meant a move in some direction, and I attacked him accordingly.
"Is that killing 'get-up' entirely for our benefit, John?" I asked; "or are you bound on some expedition that requires more fascinations than common?"
John coloured—he has taken to blushing lately. "I'm going down to Wales for a few days' shooting, Kate," was his reply. "I shall come back again when the frost breaks up if Lady Horsingham will be good enough to receive me." Aunt Horsingham is always very civil to John, and so is Cousin Amelia. People generally are to young bachelors. I wonder why men ever marry; they are so much more in request without wives and children.
"Always happy to see you," said Aunt Horsingham, with an emphasis on the pronoun. "By-the-way, what is your address in Wales, that I may forward your letters?"
John looked rather guilty as he handed an envelope to my aunt and begged her to copy it exactly.
"I can't pronounce the name of my friend Lloyd's place," he said, "but you'll find it written there in seven consonants and one vowel."