“Oh! what has your father to answer for, who forced you into the church!” thought Alfred.
“My dear Buckhurst,” said he, “my dear dean—”
“Call me Buckhurst, if you love me.”
“I do love you, it is impossible to help it, in spite of—”
“All my faults—say it out—say it out—in spite of your conscience,” added Buckhurst, trying to laugh.
“Not in spite of my conscience, but in favour of yours,” said Alfred, “against whose better dictates you have been compelled all your life to act.”
“I have so, but that’s over. What remains to be done at present? I am in real distress for five hundred pounds. Apropos to your being engaged in this dilapidation suit, you can speak to Mrs. Falconer about it. Tell her I have given up the thing; and see what she will do.”
Alfred promised he would speak to Mrs. Falconer. “And, Alfred, when you see your sister Caroline, tell her that I am not in one sense such a wretch—quite, as she thinks me. But tell her that I am yet a greater wretch—infinitely more miserable than she, I hope, can conceive—beyond redemption—beyond endurance miserable.” He turned away hastily in an agony of mind. Alfred shut the door and escaped, scarcely able to bear his own emotion.
When they met at dinner, Mrs. Dean Falconer was an altered person—her unseemly morning costume and well-worn shawl being cast aside, she appeared in bloom-coloured gossamer gauze, and primrose ribbons, a would-be young lady. Nothing of that curmudgeon look, or old fairy cast of face and figure, to which he had that morning been introduced, but in their place smiles, and all the false brilliancy which rouge can give to the eyes, proclaimed a determination to be charming.
The dean was silent, and scarcely ate any thing, though the dinner was excellent, for his lady was skilled in the culinary department, and in favour of Alfred had made a more hospitable display than she usually condescended to make for her husband’s friends. There were no other guests, except a young lady, companion to Mrs. Falconer. Alfred was as agreeable and entertaining as circumstances permitted; and Mrs. Buckhurst Falconer, as soon as she got out of the dining-room, even before she reached the drawing-room, pronounced him to be a most polite and accomplished young man, very different indeed from the common run, or the usual style, of Mr. Dean Falconer’s dashing bachelor beaux, who in her opinion were little better than brute bears.