She makes the major an excellent wife; and, though, as the years roll on, their means do not increase in proportion to their family, Mrs. Newton is never heard to complain or taunt her sober husband with the fact that she might have done better—not even when Madame Armine loses her custom altogether, and necessity has trained her hitherto idle fingers to turn her dresses and darn her children's stockings. The friendship between her and Lady Saunderson does not prosper, for their paths naturally diverge somewhat widely, and, when they meet again, after the lapse of some years, those erst kindred spirits find they have scarce a thought, a wish, a pleasure in common.
Pauline looks upon Florrie with contempt, as having degenerated into a dowdy, baby-ridden drudge, and Florrie pities Lady Saunderson's unloved and childless lot, chained to a man whom she despises and dislikes, with no light ahead to relieve the gray dreariness of coming age, when her beauty and her social triumphs will be things of the past.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
For three months Mr. Everard puzzles over the flattering yet almost incredible revelation of Miss Cicely's attachment to him, during which time he leaves no stone unturned, no device unburied to lure the wily damsel into some sign of self-betrayal. He haunts the Rectory night and day, dropping in at most inopportune moments, until Lady Emily Deane, a most energetic and methodical housewife, declares him a worse infliction than half a dozen school-boys home for the holidays, and sighs for the racing season that will take him away from Nutshire for a time.
But all Jack's watchings, spyings, ruses, and maiden traps are of no avail. Cicely shows him neither more nor less favor than she has done all her life, treats him with the same careless sisterly regard, smiles when she welcomes him, but does not sigh when she bids him good-by, and betrays no annoyance, pain, or pettishness when he flirts in her presence, any more than when his love for Pauline was at its fever height. So at the end of the three months he has to acknowledge himself just as puzzled and as excited as he was the first evening.
In the meantime, rather to his dismay, he begins to find many charms and attractions in the demure brown-eyed little lady which were hidden to him before. He finds a strange soothing pleasure in watching her, as he lies stretched on the old fashioned school-room sofa, busy over her endless household work, stitching, painting, making up accounts, cutting out clothes for the poor, overlooking her young sister's school-tasks, et cætera, as seemingly undisturbed, callously unconscious of his presence, as if he had been a stone effigy of idleness.
Her voice "grows" on him likewise; its music, which he has listened to carelessly, mechanically for so many years, stirs his heart at last, as it has stirred many men before him, who have been chilled by the cold graciousness of the girl's face and manner—for, when Cicely sings, she pours forth her whole soul, and speaks of love human and divine with an unrestrained, an entraînant passion which no art could have taught her.
Many a time during the sweet chill nights of early spring, when Everard hangs over her as she sits at the piano, her voice quivering through the still room with harmonious pain, her eyes glowing, her whole sober being startled into spiritual life, the young man thinks that the supreme moment has come, that his presence has helped to awake the sentimental tumult, only to be cruelly undeceived, when the last note has vibrated, by some commonplace disenchanting remark that makes him long to shake her.
"A pretty song, is it not, Jack?" she asks one night, while his every nerve is thrilling with responsive fervor. "Do you like it in the higher or lower key best? May Bennet sings it in sharps; but I like flats best—don't you?"