"Your mind will change some day, Jack."
"Then I shall begin to believe in miracles."
This was but one of the many conversations which the friends had held upon the same subject. Let their lives or their creeds differ never so much, they were always staunch and loyal to each other. Whatever new hopes might gladden Herrick's pathway, the companion of his wild youth must be ever to him as a dearly loved brother.
At Whitsuntide the House was up, and Herrick was his own master for a week. He was to spend part of the time at Lavendale Manor, but not all his holiday. He had other business for some portion of the week, and that business took him to Tunbridge Wells.
He had read in one of the fashionable journals, the Flying Post, that Lady Tredgold and her daughters were staying at the Wells; and he happened to have just at this time a desire to renew his acquaintance with her ladyship, albeit she had done her very best to snub him.
"Perhaps, now I am member for Bossiney, and supposed to stand well with Sir Robert, she may be more civil," he said to himself.
He was not mistaken in his conjecture. He met the lady and her daughters promenading the Pantiles next day, and was received with cordiality. His fame had reached the Bath, where he had been talked of as one of the rising young men of the day. Walpole's favour, his own success in the House, had been alike exaggerated by the many-tongued goddess, and Lady Tredgold, who last winter had esteemed him an insufficient match for her wealthy niece, was, in this merry month of May, inclined to look upon him as a tolerable suitor for her dowerless elder daughter, whose charms had been on the wane for the last three years, and whom the Bath and the Wells had alike rejected from the list of toasts and belles.
Mrs. Amelia herself was disposed to smile upon any gentleman of moderate abilities and good appearance, and she shone radiantly upon Herrick, who was something more than good-looking, for he had that indefinable air of superior intellect which comes of a thoughtful life, and which is always interesting to women. Mrs. Amelia piqued herself upon being intellectually superior to the common herd, and welcomed a congenial spirit. And then Herrick came fresh from the town, and was well up in all those fashionable scandals and tittle-tattlings which are agreeable even to women of mind.
Mr. Durnford and the ladies paraded side by side for three or four turns—nodded and smirked at their acquaintance, as who should say, "Here is as finished a beau as you will find in all Tunbridge just dropped into our net; would you not like to know who he is?"