The moments flew rapidly till, as we have said, three quarters of an hour had passed, as it were a minute; and neither Colonel Manners nor Isadore Falkland would have known that it had passed at all, had not a clock struck in the hall hard by, and Isadore suddenly thought that somebody--that great bugbear somebody--might deem it strange that she sat talking to Colonel Manners alone in the library, while the rest of the family were probably in the drawing-room. She now remembered, also, that she had still her riding-habit to change; and having by this time quite forgotten that Colonel Manners was an ugly man, she made the alteration of her dress an excuse to leave him, though, to speak truth, she broke off their conversation with regret, and felt inclined to look upon the moments she had thus spent as one of the pleasantest things she had yet met with in the garland of time--that garland which begins in buds and blossoms, and ends in blighted flowers and withered leaves.
Manners, for his part,--though he had from the first thought her a very beautiful girl, and a very charming one, too,--had by this time determined that she was possessed of many a more admirable quality of mind and grace of person than he had even believed before; and an involuntary sigh, which broke from his lips when she left him taught him, to feel that it was as well, upon the whole, that he was so soon to take his departure. It was a part of his policy never to encourage regrets in regard to a state of life which he had made up his mind could not be his; and he found that to live long in the same house with Isadore Falkland might cultivate those regrets much more than was desirable.
When she was gone, he thought for a moment over what had just passed, gave another moment to memories of the long gone, spent two or three more in trifling with the book he held in his hand, and then, after changing his boots in his own room, proceeded to the drawing-room. Mrs. Falkland was now there alone, but it was not long before Isadore again appeared; and, in a few minutes after, De Vaux, as we have before shown, entered the room for a single instant to enquire for Marian. Neither his aunt nor his cousin perceived that any thing had occurred to disturb his equanimity; but the eyes of his friend, quickened perhaps by what he already knew, discovered without difficulty that the pain which had been given him by the letter he had himself delivered was not at all diminished by reflection; and although he felt that he could ask no questions, he was not a little anxious for the result.
Some time passed, ere it was necessary to dress for dinner, Without any thing of importance, either in word or deed, occurring in the drawing-room, except inasmuch as Mrs. Falkland informed Colonel Manners that a lady was to dine with them on that day who had also enjoyed the advantage of his mother's acquaintance in her youth. Isadore pronounced her a foolish, tiresome woman; and Manners, on hearing her name, said he had met her some years before, but did not venture to dissent from Miss Falkland's opinion.
Mrs. Falkland smiled, and tacitly acknowledged that her own judgment of the good lady's qualities was not very different, by saying that she had merely invited her because she knew that she would feel hurt were she to hear that Colonel Manners had been long at Morley House without her having seen him. "And I never wish to hurt people's feelings, Colonel Manners," she added, "unless when it is very necessary indeed."
"It is never worth while, my dear madam," replied Manners; "and I believe that, with a little sacrifice of our comfort, without any sacrifice of sincerity, we can always avoid it, however disagreeable people may be."
Manners was in the drawing-room amongst the first after dressing, and he looked with some degree of anxiety for the appearance of De Vaux, in order to see whether the tidings he had received still continued to affect him so strongly. But when De Vaux came in his manner had wholly changed. His conversation with Marian had had the effect which such a conversation might be expected to have. The recollection of it, too, as a whole, while he had been dressing, had done as much as the conversation itself. It had shown him a sweet and consoling result, unmingled with any of the painful feelings, to which all he had himself been called upon to communicate, had given rise in his own breast. The gipsy's letter, and the suspicions which it called up, had shaken and agitated him, had taken away the foundations from the hopes and expectations of his whole life; but that which had past between him and her he loved had re-established all, and fixed the hopes of future happiness on a surer and a nobler basis than ever. He trod with a firmer, ay, and with a prouder, step, than when he had fancied himself the heir of broad lands and lordships; and when Marian herself soon after entered the room, his face lighted up with a happy glow, like the top of some high hill when it receives the first rays of the morning sun. Marian herself, too, blushed as she appeared, for all the display of her heart's inmost feelings, which she had that morning made to her lover's eyes, had left a consciousness about her heart--a slight but tremulous agitation, which brought the warm blood glowing into her cheek. There was nothing like unhappiness, however, left in the countenance of either; and Manners became satisfied, that whatever had been the contents of the gipsy's letter, the evil effects thereof were passing away.
The Lady Barbara Simpson at length arrived with her husband in her train, and was most tiresomely pleased to see Colonel Manners. She was a worthy dame in the plenitude of ten lustres, in corporeal qualities heavy, and in intellectual ones certainly not light. Vulgarity is, unfortunately, to be found in every rank,--unfortunately, because, where found in high rank, in which every means and appliance is at hand to remedy it, its appearance argues vulgarity of mind, to which the coarseness of the peasant is comparatively grace. Now Lady Barbara Simpson was of the vulgar great; and, though the blood of all the Howards might have flowed in her veins, the pure and honourable stream would have been choked up by the mental mud of her nature. In her youth, no sum or labour had been spared to ornament her mind with those accomplishments and graces which are common in her class; and as music and drawing, and a knowledge of languages, are things which, to a certain degree, may be hung on like a necklace or a bracelet, the mind of Lady Barbara was perfectly well dressed before her parents had done with her education. But nothing could make the mind itself any thing but what it was; and the load of accomplishments, which masters of all kinds strove hard to bestow, rested upon it, like jewels on an ugly person, fine things seen to a disadvantage. The want of consideration for other people's feelings, or rather the want of that peculiar delicacy of sensation called tact, which teaches rapidly to understand what other people's feelings are, she fancied a positive, instead of a negative, quality, and called it in her own mind ease and good-humour; and thus, though she certainly was a good-tempered woman, her coarseness of feeling and comprehension rendered her ten times more annoying to every one near her than if she had been as malevolent as Tisiphone.
During dinner, Manners felt as if he were sitting next to somebody clothed in hair-cloth, which caught his dress at every turn, and scrubbed him whenever he touched it; and his comfort was not greatly increased by finding himself an object of great attention and patronage to Lady Barbara. Opposite to him sat Isadore Falkland; and, though it was certainly a great relief to look in so fair a face, yet there was in it an expression of amused pity for Lady Barbara's martyr that was a little teasing. Her Ladyship first descanted enthusiastically upon the beauty of Colonel Manners's mother and called upon Mrs. Falkland to vouch how very lovely she was. Mrs. Falkland assented as briefly as possible; and Lady Barbara then took wine with Colonel Manners, and declared that there was not the slightest resemblance between him and his mother, examining every feature in his face as she did so to make herself sure of the fact.
At this point of the proceedings Manners was more amused than annoyed; for his own ugliness was no secret to himself, and he therefore knew well that it could be no secret to others. He laughed then at her Ladyship's scrutiny, and replied, "I was once considered very like my mother, Lady Barbara; but whatever resemblance I did possess was carried away by my enemy the small-pox."