“If this young fellow is sensible and good-looking, and has a little money, I really think, Ju, you ought to marry him,” concluded Lady B., talking the matter over with her protégée before she had seen Harrington.
She fancied that Juliet had cooled somewhat in her feelings towards her youthful lover within the last week or ten days. It might be, Lady B. thought, that she began to perceive that he was too young, that the difference in their ages, which was not much, and the difference in their worldly experience, which was enormous, unfitted them to be happy together.
“No doubt the young man is a pis aller,” reflected Lady Burdenshaw, after Harrington’s appearance at Medlow, “but he is a very good-looking fellow, and by no means bad—as a pis aller. Of course, he is too young for Juliet, and much too fresh and innocent to understand her; but if he knew more he wouldn’t be so eager to marry her—so she ought to be satisfied.”
Lady Burdenshaw sent a delightful sofa, and a lot of books, flowers, pillows, foot-rests, and other luxuries in one of her own waggons, within an hour of her return to Medlow, and Harrington’s comfort was considerably increased by her kindness. Still the thought of that wretched acceptance was like a thorn in every cushion, a scorpion under every pillow, a wasp in every flower. Nor was he altogether at ease about Juliet. He thought that he had detected a constraint in her manner, a shiftiness in her eyes. It had wounded him that she had so promptly opposed his being conveyed to Medlow. It might be that she was influenced only by concern for his safety; yet it would have been natural for his betrothed to wish to have him under the same roof with her, where she might tend and comfort him in his helplessness. Pain and anguish were wringing his brow, and she who should have been his ministering angel was content to limit her ministrations to half an hour of somewhat disjointed conversation, and to the polite attention of bringing him the morning papers, when everybody at Medlow had looked at them.
Lady Burdenshaw had very kindly taken upon herself to write to Matthew Dalbrook, explaining his son’s prolonged absence, and making light of his accident as a matter only involving a few days’ rest.
The few days had gone on till the fourth day after his fall, and in spite of all that Lady Burdenshaw had done to ameliorate his captivity the hours of the day and the night seemed to grow longer and longer, till he began to think of Silvio Pellico and the Man in the Iron Mask. Juliet’s visits were very short, and she was obviously absent-minded and bored even during that scanty half-hour which she gave to her betrothed.
“I’m afraid you are like Colonel Enderby’s wife,” he said, “and that the sight of sickness or suffering is more than you can bear.”
“Who was Colonel Enderby’s wife?”
“Don’t you know? She is the heroine of a very clever novel—an original, strange, and, I fear, not unnatural character.”