Dutton blushed a little under Kate's gaze, which affixed a serious meaning to his insincere words; but his eyes returned the challenge in hers, though the girl saw in an instant that the expression was not spontaneous, and Harry felt equally sure that the passion latent in his cousin's was more for "The Towers" than himself; and then he laughed inwardly as he thought how different it would be if she knew he was married.
Several days passed, and the object of Harry's visit was still unfulfilled. Indeed, a good opportunity for the disclosure seemed more remote than ever. Kate monopolized all the men in the house, and, being at home, Dutton, in common decency, could not suffer Lady Geraldine to be neglected. There were only those two girls staying at "The Towers." Others sometimes came to dinner with their parents, and an impromptu dance was often got up. Geraldine had begun to listen for Harry's step, seat herself near a vacant chair, and thrill with delight when he took it. No man dislikes such unconscious flattery, and Dutton, ill at ease in mind, felt himself soothed by her kindness.
On these occasions, Lord Bromley appeared bland and agreeable, Lady Calvert voluble and unobserving, and there was a sense of bien-être over every one, Kate, perhaps, excepted.
Dutton had received one letter from his wife. He had had a five mile-walk to get it from the post town he had bidden her address to, and opened it with a strange mixture of curiosity and yearning. It was a very bright letter, made no complaints of loneliness, and was rather divertingly written, considering the limited topics at her command; and yet Harry crunched it up in his hand with a sensation of half anger and whole disappointment. It was their first separation,—they had not been married seven weeks,—and there was scarcely an expression of affection in it!
He felt like a schoolboy who has coveted and caught some pretty wild animal for a pet, yet cannot succeed in making it fond of him.
He laughed rather bitterly as he retraced his steps. It was scarcely worth the cold, companionless walk, or the pains he had taken to evade the rest.
Why should he risk offending his uncle to please her? If that, indeed, were all, he did not know that he should. But new considerations came in. We were on the eve of drifting into the Crimean War; the papers were getting more and more threatening; and, in the event of hostilities being declared, he had applied for a ship on active service.
Could he, then, when he might never return, leave Bluebell with their marriage unacknowledged? "Though," thought he, in his moody reverie, "if that were all right, I don't believe she would care a pin if I were knocked over by a round shot."
Some curiosity and a good deal of chaff greeted Dutton on his return; but Kate did not fail to remark how little he entered into, and how quickly turned it off. That cousin Harry had some mystery of his own, the astute damsel was pretty well convinced, though to the rest he appeared light-hearted and hilarious, and enjoying to the full his enviable position.
"What a lucky young fellow that is?" had been remarked at different times by nearly every guest in the house. And the days slipped by, Harry very much "made of" by Lady Calvert, while Lady Geraldine's preference was of an unobtrusive and reticent nature—impalpable, yet grateful to the senses as the fragrance of an invisible, leaf-hidden violet.