“Brace, my son, be a man!” exclaimed Mrs Norton, her eyes the while swimming with tears. “You are young yet, and women’s hearts are not so frail as novelists would paint them. Wait on and hope. Live in the happy thought that Isa loves you; and, if she be her mother’s child, no threat, no persuasion will tempt her to give her hand without her heart. You are young, very young yet, and time may prove all—may lay bare the secrets of the past. I did suspect him. Promise me that you will hold my words secret as the grave, and that you will make no use of them, for Isa’s sake, and I will tell you.”
“Mother,” said Brace, bitterly, “I would cut off my right hand sooner than speak a word that would injure any one belonging to her. Say what you will, you cannot alter what I see already. It is all plain enough. My hands are chained, and I must, as you say, live on and hope.”
“Yes,” he said, after Mrs Norton had told him of Jane’s visit, “it is possible that all may have been her hallucinations; and it is as possible that—there—no, it is impossible, and I will not harbour the thought. Mother dear, you must teach me your old resignation, that I may wait patiently for the good time when all shall be made plain; for I will wait, you helping, though,”—he said, with a sad and mournful smile—“that time may not be on this side of the grave!”
A Visitor to his Lordship.
Lord George Maudlaine had been making rather a long stay at Merland; but things were, he told himself, going on very satisfactorily. Brace seemed to have been driven off, and in a few days would be at sea. Sir Murray was all that could be desired, and favoured more strongly than ever the matrimonial projects of his lordship, telling him, with a grim smile, that he need fear no rival now. In fact, at times, his lordship thought him almost too eager, and tried to make out whether, by any means, he was going to be what he called “taken in.” He was lying one morning about nine o’clock, indolently going over the matter in his not very logical mind. He had had a cup of coffee brought him by his valet, and had added to the dense odour he had already imparted to the pale blue satin hangings of his bed, by smoking a cigar, and spilling the ash about the delicate linen in which he lay.
“Let me see,” said his lordship, yawning, and going over the matter for the twentieth time. “I don’t think I can get anything more out of it. I can’t see how it can prove a ‘sell.’ She’s very pretty and lady-like, and well-bred, and all that sort of thing. Don’t much care for me, but then, that don’t matter. The Castle, and every penny the old man has, comes to her at his death, and he comes down handsome as to marriage settlements. Why, there can’t be anything wrong, though the more she hangs away, the more he pushes the matter forward. I’d run back in a moment if I thought I was being ‘done’; but, then, I don’t see how I can be; and, besides, it was my own seeking at first. It’s all right, and in a few months I shall be able to shake myself clear of those precious Hebrews. Come in! Well, Willis?”
“Gentleman wishes to see your lordship on important business.”
“Must be some one wants his little bill,” thought his lordship. “Tell him I’m particularly engaged,” he said, aloud. “What the deuce does he mean by coming at such an hour as this? Know who it is?”
“Yes, my lord,” said the valet, meaningly, for as his own salary was regularly paid, and his perquisites were many, he had a very profound contempt for all duns. “Think it’s Mr Braham, my lord.”