A Double Knot

by George Manville Fenn

“Too much, my dear child. Yes, certainly; but a little is very pleasurable, and innocent, and good.”

Marie’s eyes, as they met his, said that they were delighted to hear it, and as she sat and let the quiet, chivalrous old gentleman draw her out, no one would have credited her with being one of the heroines of some of the schoolroom scenes in which poor little Ruth had been the victim.

Lord Henry Moorpark grew more and more thoughtful as he chatted on with his companion. There was something inexpressibly refreshing in Marie’s words and ways, and he, too, congratulated himself upon the dinner-party, which he had looked upon as a nuisance, and to which he had come solely out of respect for Lady Littletown, turning out so pleasurable and fresh.

He was not the only elderly guest who thoroughly enjoyed the dinner, for the Honourable Isabella Dymcox partook of her share of the courses in a state of, for her, unwonted flutter. In accordance with the plotting and planning that had been at work in the Palace coterie, she had come fully prepared to give a furtive observation to what was going on with Clotilde and Marie, the children who, with her sister, she was fain to confess had arrived at a marriageable age; but from the moment she had laid her tremulous hand upon Marcus Glen’s arm, and had been led by him to her seat, her nieces had been forgotten.

Certainly Glen had several times over exchanged glances with Clotilde, and taken notice of the fact that Elbraham was growing more and more familiar and loud; but all the same he had found ample time to devote himself with a good deal of assiduity to Miss Isabella, making her at first surprised and cold, soon after pleased and full of agreeable thoughts, and at last thoroughly gratified at the way in which her companion attended to her lightest wishes and conversed upon society at Hampton Court.

“I—I won’t be so foolish as so think he means anything,” said Miss Isabella to herself; “for he is quite young and manly-looking, almost handsome, while I am getting very old indeed, and all hope of that is past; but he is very nice and gentlemanly, and so very different to officers as a rule. I must say I like him very much.”

She showed, too, that she did as soon as the cold formal crust had been melted away, and Marcus was not slow to realise the fact.

He was perfectly honest, for he knew that the Honourable Isabella was the aunt of Clotilde, and being as impressionable as most young men of his age, he had felt to some extent the power of that lady’s eyes. Under the circumstances, as he had been thrown with the relative, he had thought it fair campaigning to make friends with her, and this he had done to such an extent that the attentions she had received, and a glass or two of wine, made the lady very communicative, and far happier than her sister, who found the dinner much less to her taste.

For Major Malpas was not best pleased at having to take her in, and he had confined himself to the most frigid civilities. He was perfectly gentlemanly, but as the dinner wore on he grew more polite, and by consequence the Honourable Philippa became icy in her manner, till at last she seemed to be frozen stiff.

“Humph!” he thought, “better have gone and sat with Renée Morrison. Yes,” he continued, staring hard at Dick, “your sister, my half-fledged cockerel.”