The guests were received in the drawing-room, and began to arrive in uninterrupted succession. Mr. and Mrs. Tindal, Lord and Lady Eden, Mr. and Mrs. Philip Raymond, Mr. Maurice and Miss Lois Wynyard, Mrs. Lefevre and Miss Jean Lefevre, Mr. and Mrs. Chiverton, Colonel Stokes and his wife, and Sir Edward Lucas with an architectural scheme in his pocket; however, he danced none the worse for it, as Miss Fairfax testified by dancing with him three times. She had a charming audacity in evading awkward partners, and it was observed that she waltzed only with the new member. She looked in joyous spirits, and acknowledged no reason why she should deny herself a pleasure. More than once in the course of the evening she flattered Lady Angleby's hopes by telling her it was a most delicious ball.
Mr. Fairfax contemplated his granddaughter with serene speculation. Lady Angleby had communicated to him the results of Mrs. Betts's inquisition. At a disengaged moment he noticed a wondering pathos in Bessie's eyes, which were following Mr. Cecil Burleigh's agile movements through the intricate mazes of the Lancers' Quadrilles. His prolonged gaze ended by attracting hers; she blushed and drew a long breath, and seemed to shake off some persistent thought. Then she came and asked, like a light-footed, mocking, merry girl, if he was not longing to dance too, and would he not dance with her? He dismissed her to pay a little attention to Mrs. Chiverton, who sat like a fine statue against the wall, unsought of partners, and Bessie went with cheerful submission. Her former school-rival was kind to her now with a patronizing, married superiority that she did not dislike. Mrs. Chiverton knew from her husband of the family project for Miss Fairfax's settlement in life, and as she approved of Mr. Cecil Burleigh as highly as her allegiance to Mr. Chiverton permitted her to approve of anybody but himself, she spoke at some length in his praise, desiring to be agreeable. Bessie suffered her to go on without check or discouragement; she must have understood the drift of many things this evening which had puzzled her hitherto, but she made no sign. Miss Burleigh said to her brother when they parted for the night that she really did not know what to think or what to advise, further than that Sir Edward Lucas ought to be "set down," or there was no guessing how far he might be tempted to encroach. Miss Fairfax, she considered, was too universally inclined to please.
Mr. Cecil Burleigh had no clear resolve of what he would do when he went to walk in the garden the next morning. He knew what he wanted. A sort of paradoxical exhilaration possessed him. He remembered his dear Julia with tender, weary regret, and gave his fancy license to dwell on the winsomeness of Bessie. And while it was so dwelling he heard her tuneful tongue as she came with Miss Burleigh over the grass, still white with hoar-frost where the sun had not fallen. He advanced to meet them.
"Oh, Cecil, here you are! Mr. Fairfax has been inquiring for you, but there is no hurry," said his sister, and she was gone.
Bessie wore a broad shady hat, yet not shady enough to conceal the impetuous blushes that mantled her cheeks on her companion's evasion. She felt what it was the prelude to. Mr. Cecil Burleigh, inspired with the needful courage by these fallacious signs, broke into a stammering eloquence of passion that was yet too plain to be misunderstood—not reflecting, he, that maiden blushes may have more sources than one. The hot torrent of Bessie's rose from the fountain of indignation in her heart—indignation at his inconstancy to the sweet lady who she knew loved him, and his impertinence in daring to address herself when she knew he loved that lady. She silently confessed that to this upshot his poor pretences of wooing had tended from the first, and that she had been wilfully half blind and wholly unbelieving—so unwilling are proud young creatures to imagine that their best feelings can be traded on—but she was none the less wrathful and scornful as she lifted her eyes, dilated with tears, to his, and sweeping him a curtsey turned away without a single word—without a single word, yet never was wooer more emphatically answered.
They parted and went different ways. Bessie, thinking she would give all she was worth that he had held his peace and let her keep her dream of pity and sympathy, took the shrubbery path to the village and Miss Hague's cottage-lodgings; and Mr. Cecil Burleigh, repenting too late the vain presumption that had reckoned on her youth and ignorance, apart from the divining power of an honest soul, walked off to Norminster to rid himself of his heavy sense of mortification and discomfiture.
Miss Burleigh saw her brother go down the road, and knew what had happened, and such a pang came with the certainty that only then did she realize how great had been her former confidence. She stood a long while at her window, listening and watching for Miss Fairfax's return to the house, but Bessie was resting in Miss Hague's parlor, hearing anecdotes of her father and uncles when they were little boys, and growing by degrees composed after her disturbing emotion. She wished to keep the morning's adventure to herself, or, if the story must be told, to leave the telling of it to Mr. Cecil Burleigh; and when she went back to the house, the old governess accompanying her, she betrayed no counsel by her face: that was rosy with the winter cold, and hardly waxed rosier when Lady Angleby expressed a wish to know what she had done with her nephew, missing since breakfast. Bessie very simply said that she had only seen him for a minute, and she believed that he had gone into the town; she had been paying a long-promised visit to Miss Hague.
Mr. Cecil Burleigh, reappearing midway the afternoon, was summoned to his aunt's closet and bidden to explain himself. The explanation was far from easy. Lady Angleby was profoundly irritated, and reproached her nephew with his blundering folly in visiting Miss Julia Gardiner in Miss Fairfax's company. She refused to believe but that his fascination must have proved irresistible if Miss Fairfax had not been led to the discovery of that faded romance. Was he quite sure that the young lady's answer was conclusive? Perfectly conclusive—so conclusive that he should not venture to address her again. "Not after Julia's marriage?" his sister whispered. Lady Angleby urged a temporary retreat and then a new approach: it was impossible but that a fine, spirited girl like Miss Fairfax must have ambition and some appreciation of a distinguished mind; and how was her dear Cecil to support his position without the fortune she was to bring him? At this point Mr. Cecil Burleigh manifested a contemptuous and angry impatience against himself, and rose and left the discussion to his grieved and disappointed female relatives. Mr. Fairfax, on being informed of the repulse he had provoked, received the news calmly, and observed that it was no more than he had anticipated.
Towards evening Bessie felt her fortitude failing her, and did not appear at dinner nor in the drawing-room. Her excuses were understood and accepted, and in the morning early Mr. Cecil Burleigh conveyed himself away by train to London, that his absence might release her from seclusion. Before he went, in a consultation with his aunt and Mr. Fairfax, it was agreed that the late episode in his courtship should be kept quiet and not treated as final. Later in the day Mr. Fairfax carried his granddaughter home to Abbotsmead, not unconsoled by the reflection that he was not to be called upon to resign her to make bright somebody else's hearth. Bessie was much subdued. She had passed a bad night, she had shed many tears, and though she had not encountered one reproach, she was under the distressing consciousness that she had vexed several people who had been good to her. At the same time there could not be two opinions of the wicked duplicity of a gentleman who could profess to love and wish to marry her when his heart was devoted to another lady: she believed that she never could forgive him that insult.
Yet she was sorry even to tears again when she remembered him in the dull little drawing-room at Ryde, and Miss Julia Gardiner telling him that she had forgotten her old songs which he liked better than her new ones; for it had dawned upon her that this scene—it had struck her then as sad—must have been their farewell, the finis to the love-chapter of their youth. Bessie averted her mind from the idea that Miss Julia Gardiner had consented to marry a rich, middle-aged gentleman who was a widower: she did not like it, it was utterly repugnant, she hated to think of it. Oh, that people would marry the right people, and not care so much for rank and money! Lady Angleby's loveliest sister had forty years ago aggrieved her whole family by marrying the poor squire of Carisfort; and Lady Angleby had said in Bessie's hearing that her sister was the most enviable woman she knew, happy as the day was long, though so positively indigent as to be thankful for her eldest daughter's half-worn Brentwood finery to smarten up her younger girls. It must indeed be a cruel mistake to marry the wrong person. So far the wisdom and sentiment of Bessie Fairfax—all derived from observation or most trustworthy report—and therefore not to be laughed at, although she was so young.