Moved by these considerations, gravely weighed in the grave and grey November dusk, as they rode slowly between tall hedges, leafy still, but sear and red with the frost, Juliet felt inclined to let herself be engaged to her legal lover. She had been engaged to several people since she danced at her first ball. The bond did not count for very much in her mind. One could always slip out of that kind of thing, if it became inconvenient—one could manage with such tact that the man himself cried off, if one were afraid of being denounced as a jilt. Juliet and her lovers had always parted friends; and she wore more than one half-hoop of sapphires or of brilliants which had once played a solemn part as her engagement ring, but which had lapsed into a souvenir of friendship.
She was not so foolish as to hasten matters. She wanted to see her way before her; and she opposed Harrington’s youthful ardour with the calm savoirfaire of seven and twenty. She called him a foolish boy, and declared that they must cease to be friends if he insisted upon talking nonsense. She would have to accept a very urgent invitation to Lady Balgowny Brigg’s Castle in Scotland, which she had been fencing with for years, if he made it difficult for them to meet. She threw him into a state of abject alarm by this stupendous threat.
“I won’t say a word you can take objection to,” he protested, “though I can’t think why you should object.”
“You forget that I have to study other people’s ideas as well as my own,” she answered gently. “I hope you won’t be offended if I tell you that my mother would never speak to me again if I were engaged to you.”
“No doubt Lady Baldwin has higher views,” the young man said meekly.
“Much higher views. My poor mother belongs to the old school. She cannot forget that her grandfather was a marquis. It is foolish, but I suppose it is human nature. Don’t let us talk any more about this nonsense. I like you very much as my brother’s friend, and I shall go on liking you if you don’t make me unhappy by talking nonsense.”
Harrington took comfort from that one word “unhappy.” It implied depths of feeling beneath that fashionable manner which held him at arm’s length.
His spirits were somewhat dashed presently when Miss Baldwin looked with friendly contemptuousness at his neat heather-mixture coat and mud-stained white cords, and said carelessly,—
“It’s a pity you don’t belong to the Hunt. I fancy you would look rather nice in pink!”
“I—I—have so lately given up the idea of the Church,” he faltered.