“No, my love, I am persuaded you would not mean to be unkind,” Lady Bolderwood said, patting her cheek. “It is just that your mind is running a little too much on your pleasuring at Stanyon. There I don’t cry! I know I have only to give you a hint.”
Marianne kissed her, and promised amendment. She did indeed perform conscientiously such tasks as were given her, but her spirits were uneven. At one moment she would be her merry self, at the next she would be pensive, slipping away to walk by herself in the shrubbery, or sitting with her eyes bent on the pages of a book, and her thoughts far away. The various young gentlemen who paid morning-visits to Whissenhurst found her gay, but disinclined to flirt with them, a change which Lady Bolderwood at first saw with satisfaction, and which soon led her to suspect that Marianne might have got into a scrape at Stanyon. When Martin came to Whissenhurst, and was met by Marianne with unaccustomed formality, she was sure of it, and she begged her daughter to tell her what had occurred. Marianne, hanging down her head, admitted that Martin had tried to make love to her, but she hastened to add that it had not been so very bad, and Drusilla had thought it would be foolish to refine too much upon it.
“Drusilla Morville is a very sensible girl,” said Lady Bolderwood approvingly. “She is perfectly right, and perhaps I am not sorry that it happened, for it has made you see what flirting leads to, my dear, and in future you will take better care, I am sure.”
She believed that the want of tone in Marianne’s spirits was now accounted for, but when she confided the story to her husband he disconcerted her by saying in his bluff way: “Well, Mama, you should know your daughter best, but it’s the first time I ever heard of a girl’s moping about the house because a handsome young fellow shows himself to be head over ears in love with her!”
“My dear Sir Thomas, I am persuaded she was much shocked by Martin’s behaviour — ”
“Shocked! Ay, so she might be, the naughty puss! But that’s no reason why she should peck at her dinner, and sit staring into the fire when she thinks we ain’t watching her. No, no, my lady, if it’s young Frant who has made her lose her appetite, you may call me a Dutchman!”
His wife smiled indulgently, and shook her head, but events proved Sir Thomas to have been right. On the very next morning, when Marianne sat in the window of the front parlour with her Mama, helping her to hem some handkerchiefs, a horseman was seen trotting up the drive. Lady Bolderwood did not immediately recognize him, and she was just wondering aloud who it could be when she became aware of an extraordinary change in her listless daughter. Marianne was blushing, her head bent over her stitchery, but the oddest little smile trembling on her lips. In great astonishment, Lady Bolderwood stared at her.
“I think — I believe — it is Lord Ulverston, Mama!” murmured Marianne.
Lord Ulverston it was, and in a very few moments he was shaking hands with them, fluently explaining that since his way led past their house he could not but call to enquire whether Sir Thomas and her ladyship were quite recovered from their indispositions. Lady Bolderwood’s astonishment grew, for as he turned from her to take Marianne’s hand in his she perceived such a glowing look in her daughter’s countenance, such a shy yet beaming smile in her eyes as made her seem almost a stranger to her own mother.
Sir Thomas, informed by a servant of his lordship’s arrival, then entered the room, and made the Viscount heartily welcome. To his lady’s considerable indignation, he bestowed on her a quizzing look which informed her how far more exactly he had read their daughter’s mind than she had. The Viscount stayed chatting easily for perhaps half an hour, and if his eyes strayed rather often to Marianne’s face, and his voice underwent a subtle change when he had occasion to address her, his conduct was otherwise strictly decorous. When he rose to depart, Sir Thomas escorted him to the front-door. No sooner, however, was the parlour-door shut behind them than his lordship requested the favour of a few words with his host.