"Eighteen! Well, I suppose it is time you should see some good company. I shall have to take a house at the West End, and Mademoiselle must get her fan and mantilla, and prepare to play duenna. Would you like to spend a winter in London, Rena?"
Irene hesitated, glanced at Durnford, who, on the watch for any act of beneficence from those lovely eyes, responded with an adoring look, and a little nod of the head, which meant "Snap at the offer of a London season."
She remembered how he had told her he must get his living in town.
"O my dear father, there is nothing in the world I wish for so much."
The Squire sighed. This country seclusion was safe, and suited him best. He looked thoughtfully at Lavendale. He was young, though not in his first youth; he had a respectable title, and his estate joined that which would some day belong to Irene. A match between those two must needs be advantageous—if Lavendale would altogether reform his character, and if the estate were not too heavily encumbered. The country attorney, who looked after Lavendale's property, had assured Mr. Bosworth that the mortgages were mere bagatelles, and of recent date. Lavendale had been extravagant, but he had started with a handsome fortune in ready money, the accumulation of his minority. "Well, we will take a taste of town pleasures," said the Squire, after a pause, "if Lord Lavendale will be our cicisbeo and Mentor. I have not seen the inside of a playhouse since the beginning of the century, and they tell me there are now six theatres, where there used to be but two, and that masquerades are more fashionable than ever."
They all went back to the drawing-room together, in the French fashion, which Lavendale suggested as an improvement on English manners.
"I languish till I hear Miss Bosworth sing," he cried; and at her father's bidding, Irene seated herself at the harpsichord, and began a little song of Lully's with some old French words.
How full, and round, and rich the fresh young notes sounded to ears that had been sated by fine singing in the three great capitals of London, Paris, and Vienna! and with what tender expression the singer pronounced those simple childlike lines about Strephon, who had abandoned his hillside, and left his flock and Chloe lamenting! Strephon would be gone to-morrow, and Fairmile Park would be desolate without him. They might meet again in London in November—would so meet, most likely, for his lordship and Mr. Durnford were inseparables; but how was the yawning gulf between July and November to be bridged over? how was that great gap in time to be lived through? Irene sang song after song at his lordship's entreaty. He was not, like Mr. Topsparkle, fanatico per la musica, a creature who ran after prime donne, and thought an Italian tenor the noblest development of human genius; he could not sit at an organ and play for hours like a soul possessed by the spirit of melody; but he had a very genuine love of music, a good deal of taste, and a little knowledge, and he hung enraptured over the harpsichord, and gave Durnford innumerable agonies during every song Irene sang, agonies which poisoned the sweetness of her voice and the beauty of every melody. Scarlatti, was it? Corelli, Handel? Who cared what composer had woven that web in which his soul was caught and tortured? She was singing to Lavendale. It was to Lavendale her lovely eyes were lifted as she answered his questions between the songs. Lavendale was stealing her heart away from him, that heart which had been so nearly his.
"He has a potency with women which is almost diabolical. It may be his faith in himself which makes him irresistible, that certainty of conquering which almost always conquers, where there are good looks and a spice of wit to sustain audacity. Yes, he will win her, or he will race me hard for the prize; but by ——," and Herrick clenched his fist, with a big oath, sitting in a shadowy corner behind the harpsichord where nobody noted him, "he shall have a fight for it! I meant to deal honestly with her, but I won't be cheated out of her love. If I can't have her with fair play, I will try foul. I won't stand on one side and doff my hat while my friend leads her to the altar."
Such a reverie as this boded ill for innocent Irene yonder, smiling at the keys of her harpsichord, her whole soul in the music, heedless of Lord Lavendale's compliments, neither valuing them nor fearing them, as easy in her simplicity as a woman of fashion after her seventh season: ill, too, for Irene boded Lavendale's musing, which tended to a determination to win the heiress, and repair his fortunes with one triumphant stroke. He had been told of that great coup made by Mr. Bosworth during the South Sea craze—how he had bought largely when the shares were first issued; held gingerly, always on the alert for a catastrophe; and how he had played a vigorous part with the bulls in sending up the value of the stock to an almost fabulous point, and just when the town was maddest had sold his shares for exactly ten times the price at which he had bought them.