He called the very next day and joined us at tea. The following afternoon we, Hephzy, Frances and I, visited the greenhouses. On this occasion we met, for the first time, the lady of the Manor herself. Lady Kent Carey was a stout, gray-haired person, of very decided manner and a mannish taste in dress. She was gracious and affable, although I suspected that much of her affability toward the American visitors was assumed because she wished to please her nephew. A. Carleton Heathcroft, Esquire, was plainly her ladyship's pride and pet. She called him “Carleton, dear,” and “Carleton, dear” was, in his aunt's estimation, the model of everything desirable in man.
The greenhouses were spacious and the display of rare plants and flowers more varied and beautiful than any I had ever seen. We walked through the grounds surrounding the mansion, and viewed with becoming reverence the trees planted by various distinguished personages, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, Her late Majesty Queen Victoria, Ex-President Carnot of France, and others. Hephzy whispered to me as we were standing before the Queen Victoria specimen:
“I don't believe Queen Victoria ever planted that in the world, do you, Hosy. She'd look pretty, a fleshy old lady like her, puffin' away diggin' holes with a spade, now would she!”
I hastily explained the probability that the hole was dug by someone else.
Hephzy nodded.
“I guess so,” she added. “And the tree was put in by someone else and the dirt put back by the same one. Queen Victoria planted that tree the way Susanna Wixon said she broke my best platter, by not doin' a single thing to it. I could plant a whole grove that way and not get a bit tired.”
Lady Carey bade us farewell at the fish-ponds and asked us to come again. Her nephew, however, accompanied us all the way home—that is, he accompanied Frances, while Hephzy and I made up the rear guard. The next day he dropped in for some tennis. Herbert Bayliss was there before him, so the tennis was abandoned, and a three-cornered chat on the lawn substituted. Heathcroft treated the young doctor with a polite condescension which would have irritated me exceedingly.
From then on, during the fortnight which followed, there was a great deal of Heathcroft in the rectory social circle. And when he was not there, it was fairly certain that he and Frances were together somewhere, golfing, walking or riding. Sometimes I accompanied them, sometimes Herbert Bayliss made one of the party. Frances' behavior to the young doctor was tantalizingly contradictory. At times she was very cordial and kind, at others almost cold and repellent. She kept the young fellow in a state of uncertainty most of the time. She treated Heathcroft much the same, but there was this difference between them—Heathcroft didn't seem to mind; her whims appeared to amuse rather than to annoy him. Bayliss, on the contrary, was either in the seventh heaven of bliss or the subcellar of despair. I sympathized with him, to an extent; the young lady's attitude toward me had an effect which, in my case, was ridiculous. My reason told me that I should not care at all whether she liked me or whether she didn't, whether I pleased or displeased her. But I did care, I couldn't help it, I cared altogether too much. A middle-aged quahaug should be phlegmatic and philosophical; I once had a reputation for both qualities, but I seemed to possess neither now.
I found myself speculating and wondering more than ever concerning the outcome of all this. Was there anything serious in the wind at all? Herbert Bayliss was in love with Frances Morley, that was obvious now. But was she in love with him? I doubted it. Did she care in the least for him? I did not know. She seemed to enjoy his society. I did not want her to fall in love with A. Carleton Heathcroft, certainly. Nor, to be perfectly honest, did I wish her to marry Bayliss, although I like him much better than I did Lady Carey's blasé nephew. Somehow, I didn't like the idea of her falling in love with anyone. The present state of affairs in our household was pleasant enough. We three were happy together. Why could not that happiness continue just as it was?
The answer was obvious: It could not continue. Each day that passed brought the inevitable end nearer. My determination to put the thought of that end from my mind and enjoy the present was shaken. In the solitude of the study, in the midst of my writing, after I had gone to my room for the night, I found my thoughts drifting toward the day in October when, our lease of the rectory ended, we must pack up and go somewhere. And when we went, would she go with us? Hardly. She would demand the promised “settlement,” and then—What then? Explanations—quarrels—parting. A parting for all time. I had reached a point where, like Hephzy, I would have gladly suggested a real “adoption,” the permanent addition to our family of Strickland Morley's daughter, but she would not consent to that. She was proud—very proud. And she idolized her father's memory. No, she would not remain under any such conditions—I knew it. And the certainty of that knowledge brought with it a pang which I could not analyze. A man of my age and temperament should not have such feelings.