"Thank you, not to-day, Mr. Armstrong," he replied, "but I will not forget your kind invitation." And merely raising his hat in farewell to the ladies, and returning Freddy's warm adieu by lifting the boy and kissing him, Henry Halford turned towards his own home, feeling greatly elated. Was not this meeting with Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong full of hopefulness as to the result of a project on which he had made up his mind?
Mary escaped to her room to dress for dinner with every nerve quivering with excitement.
What would be the result of this meeting? Why had Henry Halford forced his company upon her mother? Was he going to ask her father about her, as she had read in books was the custom of gentlemen? And the young girl who had been kept so secluded from society, blushed at the recollection that if Henry Halford meant what he said on that evening in Christchurch Meadows, he must wish her to be his wife.
Mary Armstrong had never been joked about sweethearts and flirtation; to her mother there had always appeared a want of womanly delicacy and refinement in making such things a subject for ridicule, and Mary had grown to womanhood with the same innate refinement. She had no girl friends of her own age to tell her their tales of love and conquest, of discarded lovers, and contemptible treatment of honourable proposals, as conduct of which a woman might be proud. She had gained her ideas of love from poetry, and Milton's Eve before the fail was her beau idéal of what a woman should be—
"For contemplation he and valour formed,
For softness she, and sweet attractive grace;
He for God only, she for God in him.
... Though his eye sublime declared
Absolute rule ... implied
Subjection, but required with gentle sway,
And by her yielded."
No doubt poets describe ideal characters not to be found in these fast days of practical utilitarianism. What is an ideal worth when compared with the real earthly good which money can produce? Yet money cannot produce happiness, with all its power; and the ruling god of the present day has caused more unhappiness in domestic life by its presence than by its absence. Mary Armstrong had formed her own beau idéal of what a husband ought to be, and certainly in the component parts of this ideal money had no place. She had never known the want of money, and was therefore ignorant of its value. She was to learn this lesson by bitter experience.
Very little remark was made at dinner on the evening of which we write respecting the meeting with Henry Halford.
Mrs. Armstrong avoided the subject as much as her daughter, but for very different reasons; and her brothers, who had not been at home from school long, were full of talk about their examinations and their prizes. But with the dessert Freddy made his appearance, and as usual took his place between his father's knees.
Presently Freddy looked up. "Papa," he said, "isn't Mr. Henry Halford a nice man?"
"Ah, yes, I saw him kiss you, Freddy, as if you were old friends; when have you seen him before to-day?"