“I don’t suppose we shall see Theodore,” said Juanita, as the bays bowled merrily along the level road.
The greys were getting a rest after yesterday’s work, and these were Lady Cheriton’s famous barouche horses, to whom the phaeton seemed a toy.
“He must have gone to Heidelberg before now,” added Juanita.
“He must be fond of Heidelberg to be running off there when it is so jolly at home.”
“He was there for a year, you know, before he went to Cambridge, and he is always going back there or to the Hartz for his holidays. I sometimes tell him he is half a German.”
She rather hoped that Theodore was in Germany by this time; and yet she had assured herself in her own mind that there could be no pain to him in their meeting. She knew that he had loved her—that in one rash hour, after a year’s absence in America, when he had not known, or had chosen to forget, the state of affairs between her and Godfrey, he had told her of his love, and had asked her to give him hope. It was before her engagement; but she was not the less frank in confessing her attachment to Godfrey. “I can never care for any one else,” she said; “I have loved him all my life.”
All her life! Yes, that was Theodore’s irreparable loss. While he, the working man, had been grinding out his days in the treadmill round of a country solicitor’s office, the young patrician had been as free as the butterflies in Juanita’s rose garden; free to woo her all day long, free to share her most trifling pleasures and sympathize with her lightest pains. What chance had the junior partner in Dalbrook & Son against Sir Godfrey Carmichael of Milbrook Priory?
Theodore had managed his life so well after that one bitter rebuff that Juanita had a right to suppose that his wound had healed, and that the pain of that hour had been forgotten. She was sincerely attached to him, as a kinsman, and respected him more than any other young man of her acquaintance. Had not Lord Cheriton, that admirable judge of character, declared that Theodore was one of the cleverest men he knew, and regretted that he had not attached himself to the higher branch of the law, as the more likely in his case to result in wealth and fame?
The phaeton drove up to the old Hanoverian doorway as St. Peter’s clock chimed the quarter after one. The old man-servant looked surprised at this brilliant vision of a beautiful girl, a fine pair of horses, a smart groom, and Sir Godfrey Carmichael. The tout-ensemble was almost bewildering even to a man accustomed to see the various conveyances of neighbouring landowners at his master’s door.
“Yes, my lady, both the young ladies are at home,” said Brown, and led the way upstairs with unshaken dignity.