He would have done better to have held his peace. The Dowager very well recollected that he had not been there, for it was what she had been saying for ever: he liked his brother so little that even when they had been children he had always preferred to slip away rather than to play with him. She had known how it would be from the outset; she had not the least doubt that he had brought Ulverston to Stanyon merely to ruin poor Martin’s chances of marrying an heiress; and now that she came to think of it, she had never liked Ulverston, besides knowing a very discreditable story about his Uncle Lucius.
“And as for your conduct in not wearing the Frant ring, and causing the Indian epergne to be removed from the Smaller dining-table, I am sure it is all of a piece, and just what anyone would have expected!” she said. “I daresay it is the influence of Lady Penistone, but on that head I shall maintain silence, for although I never liked her, and, indeed, consider her a fast, frivolous woman, I do not forget that she is your grandmother; and if I am persuaded that her third son was fathered by Roxby, as no one could doubt who had ever clapped eyes on him, I am determined that nothing shall prevail upon me to say so!”
She then startled Miss Morville, as much as the Earl, by bursting into tears; and Gervase, who had stiffened at this all too probable answer to the problem of his Uncle Maurice’s curious likeness to my Lord Roxby, relaxed again, and only said, in a coaxing tone: “It is very bad, ma’am, but although I had not enough good taste to get myself killed in the late wars, at least you may be sure that I shall never accuse Martin of attempting to put a period to my existence.”
Perhaps as much surprised as he by her unaccustomed display of weakness, she dried her eyes, saying: “It is one thing to think you would very likely not survive the war, and quite another to be contriving your death, St. Erth! You may choose to believe that I am in league with poor Martin to kill you, which only serves to convince me that I shall never meet with anything but ingratitude, for it is quite untrue, and I have instead been considering how I might contrive a very eligible match for you!”
He thanked her gravely, and she said: “You may ask Louisa if it is not so! But one thing I am determined on! No matter what comes of it I shall not desire her to assist me in the matter, for she has written me such a letter, and about her own brother, too, as makes me excessively sorry to think that she is coming into Lincolnshire this summer!”
After this, she begged Miss Morville to find her smelling-salts, and the Earl made good his escape.
His recovery from the effects of his wound was speedy enough to astonish everyone but the Viscount. Having once left his room, he showed no signs of suffering a relapse; and it was not many days before he was taking the air on horseback. On these gentle expeditions he was invariably accompanied by Ulverston, who refused to be shaken off even when the Earl’s intention was merely to return Mr. and Mrs. Morville’s call. Under these circumstances it was scarcely surprising that the visit should have passed without the exchange of anything but civilities. Lord Ulverston rattled on in his usual style; and the Earl, although primed by his friend with a description of that one of Mrs. Morville’s novels which he had been obliged by circumstances to read, and which he said was a devilish prosy book about a dead bore of a girl who never did anything but struggle against adversity, and moralize about it, wisely chose to confine his conversation with his hostess to the military career of her elder son. Nor did he make the mistake of attempting to hoax Mr. Morville into believing that he had ever so much as looked between the covers of one of his interesting histories, a piece of rare good sense which caused Mr. Morville slightly to temper his first criticism of him. He still said that he was a frippery young fashionable, whose exquisite tailoring bore every evidence of extravagance, but he now added, in a fair-minded spirit, that he was not such an empty-headed jackanapes as he looked.
Mrs. Morville fully appreciated the worth of this tribute, which, indeed, set the Earl considerably above either Captain Jack Morville, of the — th Foot, or Mr. Tom Morville, Scholar of Queens’ College, Cambridge, but it did not greatly elevate her spirits. She sighed, and said: “One cannot wonder at Drusilla, but I dare not suppose that her regard is returned. I perceive that his manners are so universally pleasing that I cannot but dread lest she may be refining too much upon what, with him, is the merest civility. I do not scruple to say, my dear sir, that his air, his address, and his person are all so exactly what must cause any girl in the possession of her senses to fall in love with him, that I quite despair! Do you think, Mr. Morville, that he betrays any decided partiality for Drusilla?”
“No,” responded her life’s partner unequivocally. “Not that I have given the matter a thought, for I believe it to be one of your fancies, my dear.”
Mrs. Morville might have been cheered had she known that she was not quite the only person to suspect the Earl of forming an attachment. Whether because his own thoughts were largely occupied by the tender passion, or because he knew his friend better than did anyone else at Stanyon, the lively Viscount had already cocked a knowing eye in his direction. In a burst of confidence, engendered in him by the Stanyon port, he had even dropped a hint in the Chaplain’s ear.