It was odd, now that Vane Trevor had come to set his heart upon marrying Violet Darkwell, that his confidence in his claims, which he would have thought it simple lunacy to question a few weeks ago, began to waver. He began to think how that gentlemanlike Mr. Sergeant Darkwell, with the bright and thoughtful face, who was, no doubt, ambitious, would regard the rental and estate of Revington with those onerous charges upon it; how Miss Perfect, with her whims and fancies, and positive temper, might view the whole thing; and, lastly, whether he was quite so certain of the young lady’s “inclinations,” as the old novels have it, as he felt a little time before: and so he lay awake in an agitation of modesty, quite new to him.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
VANE TREVOR WALKS DOWN TO SEE MISS VIOLET
Looking at himself in his glass next morning, Vane Trevor pronounced the coup d’œil “awfully seedy. This sort of thing, by Jove, it will never do, it would wear out any fellow; where’s the good in putting off? there’s no screw loose, there’s nothing against me; I hope I stand pretty well here—hang it⸺I’ll walk down to-day,” and he looked over the slopes to sunny Gilroyd, “and if a good opportunity turns up, I’ll speak to Miss Darkwell.”
And though he had taken care, in secret mercy to his nerves, to state his resolve hypothetically, his heart made two or three strange throbs and experienced a kind of sinking like that said to attend, on the eve of battle, an order to prepare for action.
Accordingly, before twelve o’clock Vane Trevor walked into the porch of Gilroyd, and rang the bell beside the open door, and stood with the gold head of his cane to his chin, looking on the woodlands toward Revington, and feeling as he might have felt in an ominous dream.
“Miss Perfect at home?” he inquired of the maid, with a haggard simper.