Clare remained for some time standing where he had left her as if turned to stone. The proud and sensitive girl's cheek burned with mingled shame and anger as she thought of the ridicule, the perhaps coarse gibes of the clubs, and general irony of society, which such an alliance was apt to excite; and with all the usual command of every emotion peculiar to her set and style, as this conviction came upon her, tears hot and swift rushed into her sweet dark eyes.
Could Sir Carnaby have been so insane as to contemplate a double alliance with that fast family? she asked of herself.
'It would have made us all more than ever ridiculous!' she muttered aloud; and then she thought with more pleasure of her re-engagement with Trevor Chute, the promise given, and which she would certainly redeem; yet she fairly wept for the price of its redemption, as she shrank with a species of horror from seeing that 'Parky party,' as she knew the men about town called the fair Evelyn, occupying the place of her dead mother at home and abroad, and presented at Court and elsewhere in the Collingwood jewels.
Vanity, perhaps, as much as anything else, was the cause of this new idea in the mind of the shallow Sir Carnaby. Though he felt perfectly conscious that his own day was past, he would not acknowledge it. He knew well, too, that though many enjoyed his dinners and wines, his crushes in Piccadilly, and his cover-shooting at Carnaby Court, and that many tolerated him for the sake of his rank, position, and charming daughters, they deemed him 'no end of an old bore,' and this conviction galled and cut him to the quick.
Hence, if Evelyn Desmond became his wife, the fact would be a kind of protest against Time itself!
'How society will laugh! it is intolerable!' exclaimed Ida, thoroughly rousing herself when she heard the startling tidings. 'You, Clare, were ever his favourite—the one who, as he said always, reminded him most of poor mamma 'when she last folded her pale, thin hands so meekly, and after kissing us all, gave up her soul to God; yet he could tell you, in this jaunty way, that another was to take her place, and that other was such a woman as Evelyn Desmond!'
Already the rumour of 'the coming event' must, they thought, be known in town, else wherefore the hint thrown out so vaguely by Trevor Chute? Already! The mortification of the girls was unspeakable.
Had the unwelcome announcement been made to her but a day sooner, at least before her chance interview with Trevor—that interview so full of deep and tender interest to them both—she might have been tempted to make a promise more distinct than she had given, for Clare's gentle heart was full of indignation now.
Trevor Chute could not now make, as in the past time, such settlements as her father's ambition required and deemed necessary; yet his means were ample, and she had lands, riches, and position enough for both; so why should she not be his wife?
Such are the idiosyncrasies of human nature, that her father, who once liked Trevor Chute, now disliked, and more than disliked him, because he felt quite sensible that he had done the frank but unfortunate soldier who had loved his daughter a wrong.