Mr. Pelham seemed the friend he preferred, and yet, after their being long together, Fitzhenry always appeared more than usually abstracted and dejected. Mr. Pelham too was the person who seemed to pay the most attention, and to take the greatest interest in herself. She fancied, indeed, that he watched them both; but it was always with such a kind, compassionate, benignant look, that she did not, as with Mr. Moore, shrink from his scrutiny.
The winter was now far advanced; hunting and shooting kept the gentlemen almost entirely out of doors, and Emmeline and her female companions were generally all the morning left to themselves. One rainy day, on which it was impossible for them to leave the house, and when Lady Saville had run through or yawned over every novel and review in the drawing-room, she proposed, for the sake of exercise, to go all over the house. “I have never yet even been admitted into your sanctum sanctorum, Lady Fitzhenry, pray let me go.”
“Oh! pray do,” echoed a young lady, starting up from a table at which she had been seated the whole morning, with most laudable industry engaged in working a purse, and endeavouring to make a hearts-ease out of invisible blue and yellow beads. “Do let us go; it will get us through this dull morning so nicely; and really without Mr. Moore and the battledoor and shuttlecock, one don’t know what to do with oneself.”
Emmeline, always wishing to be obliging, led the way to her apartment.
“How comfortable! how pretty!” all exclaimed. “Did you fit up this room yourself?” enquired Lady Saville. Emmeline answered, that she found it as it was when she first came to Arlingford. “What a delightful, gallant husband!” said Lady Saville. “Now that was his foreign education; all men should be sent abroad before they marry, to be properly drilled; it improves them wonderfully.” Poor Emmeline could not quite assent to this observation.
“Oh! dear, dear Lady Fitzhenry!” said the purse-making young lady, (by name Miss Selina Danvers,) flying up to her and seizing her hand with ecstatic fondness, “I have the greatest possible favour to ask of you; pray, pray grant it—it is to let me see your wedding-dress; I shall be more obliged to you than I can express.”
“There is nothing remarkable to see,” said Emmeline, coldly, not feeling the smallest wish to behold, or have discussed, what brought back so painfully to her mind the day on which she wore it.
“That is really being very modest,” said Lady Saville, “for it was beautiful, and, moreover, you looked remarkably pretty in it; and I own I was rather provoked at my worthy cousin Fitzhenry’s excessive stupidity or bashfulness, for I don’t think he ever looked at you. I never saw a man appear so completely stupified, and put out as he was at his marriage; and when I wished him joy, he stared, and looked as silly and sheepish as possible. Love certainly had upon him the direct contrary effect from what it had on Cymon.”
“Dear, how odd!” exclaimed Miss Danvers. “But who is Mr. Cymon, and what did it do to him? Now don’t laugh at me so, one can’t know every body; and I don’t go every year to London as you do.”
This new scent about Cymon, however, could not put the wedding finery out of Selina’s head, and she teazed poor Emmeline till she obtained from her a reluctant consent that her maid and the gown should be rung for; and soon the whole paraphernalia was exhibited with pride and pomp by Mrs. Jenkins.