"Oh, yes, Mr. Arundel; I should like it very, very much."
The young soldier could not help being amused by the little girl's earnestness. She was about the same age as his sister Letitia; but, oh, how widely different to that bouncing and rather wayward young lady, who tore the pillow-lace upon her muslin frocks, rumpled her long ringlets, rasped the skin off the sharp points of her elbows, by repeated falls upon the gravel-paths at Dangerfield, and tormented a long-suffering Swiss attendant, half-lady's-maid, half-governess, from morning till night. No fold was awry in Mary Marchmont's simple black-silk frock; no plait disarranged in the neat cambric tucker that encircled the slender white throat. Intellect here reigned supreme. Instead of the animal spirits of a thoughtless child, there was a woman's loving carefulness for others, a woman's unselfishness and devotion.
Edward Arundel did not understand all this, but I think he had a dim comprehension of the greater part of it.
"She is a dear little thing," he thought, as he watched her clinging to her father's arm; and then he began to talk about Marchmont Towers, and insisted upon being shown over the house; and, perhaps for the first time since the young heir had shot himself to death upon a bright September morning in a stubble-field within earshot of the park, the sound of merry laughter echoed through the long corridors, and resounded in the unoccupied rooms.
Edward Arundel was in raptures with everything. "There never was such a dear old place," he said. "'Gloomy?' 'dreary?' 'draughty?' pshaw! Cut a few logs out of that wood at the back there, pile 'em up in the wide chimneys, and set a light to 'em, and Marchmont Towers would be like a baronial mansion at Christmas-time." He declared that every dingy portrait he looked at was a Rubens or a Velasquez, or a Vandyke, a Holbein, or a Lely.
"Look at that fur border to the old woman's black-velvet gown, John; look at the colouring of the hands! Do you think anybody but Peter Paul could have painted that? Do you see that girl with the blue-satin stomacher and the flaxen ringlets?—one of your ancestresses, Miss Mary, and very like you. If that isn't in Sir Peter Lely's best style,—his earlier style, you know, before he was spoiled by royal patronage, and got lazy,—I know nothing of painting."
The young soldier ran on in this manner, as he hurried his host from room to room; now throwing open windows to look out at the wet prospect; now rapping against the wainscot to find secret hiding-places behind sliding panels; now stamping on the oak-flooring in the hope of discovering a trap-door. He pointed out at least ten eligible sites for the building of the tennis-court; he suggested more alterations and improvements than a builder could have completed in a lifetime. The place brightened under the influence of his presence, as a landscape lights up under a burst of sudden sunshine breaking through a dull grey sky.
Mary Marchmont did not wait for the removal of the table-cloth that evening, but dined with her father and his friend in a snug oak-panelled chamber, half-breakfast-room, half-library, which opened out of the western drawing-room. How different Edward Arundel was to all the rest of the world, Miss Marchmont thought; how gay, how bright, how genial, how happy! The county families, mustered in their fullest force, couldn't make such mirth amongst them as this young soldier created in his single person.
The evening was an evening in fairy-land. Life was sometimes like the last scene in a pantomime, after all, with rose-coloured cloud and golden sunlight.
One of the Marchmont servants went over to Swampington early the next day to fetch Mr. Arundel's portmanteaus from the Rectory; and after dinner upon that second evening, Mary Marchmont took her seat opposite Edward, and listened reverently while he explained to her the moves upon the chessboard.