“Not every thing. I can not buy a father, or sisters, or a brother like Maurice—and you have all these, which I want; so who is best off?”
Gwyneth looked uncertain, or unwilling to speak.
“Suppose you were to give me back my sketch-book?” said Hilary, stretching out her hand for it; but he drew it back out of her reach, with a look which quieted Hilary, and prevented her saying any more, although she could not easily have told why.
The father and son returned, during the silence which ensued after Hilary’s last speech; and Sybil, who had been very industriously working away at her sketch, now held it up for approbation, which it obtained, as it deserved. The party then prepared to return homeward, and little Nest, who had been wandering about under the charge of Gwyneth, was recalled, and once more lodged in her pannier.
Mr. Huyton was pressed to come in as usual; but thinking
that on the last evening the family would be more comfortable without a stranger of the party, he declined, and mounting his horse, after very cordial farewells to Maurice, he rode slowly home, meditating on the charms of Hilary, and thinking what he should do with regard to her. To let things take their own course, and be decided hereafter by events, seemed to him the best thing to do.
In the mean time he carried away the sketch-book, with the intention of abstracting and appropriating the unfinished sketch on which her tears had fallen, and giving her a copy, of his own doing, of the scene she had attempted to delineate.
So things did take their course; and acting on impulse, with out any definite idea, or decided plan, Charles Huyton continued to come and go, between the Ferns and the Vicarage, all through the autumn and ensuing winter. He finished his house, and arranged his grounds, and returned his neighbors’ visits, sometimes accepting invitations to dinner, sometimes even appearing at a ball, being exceedingly admired, and very much courted, and making himself universally agreeable when he did go into society; but withal preserving a sort of mystery about his usual pursuits and amusements, which rendered him piquant and interesting in the highest degree.
He never gave parties of any kind, not even to gentlemen; did not preserve his game, and did not either hunt or shoot; men were as much puzzled to account for his oddities as women. The neighborhood—that is, the part of the country inhabited by gentlemen’s families—lay almost entirely in the opposite direction to Hurstdene, and so far removed from the vicinity of the Vicarage, that the length and frequency of his visits to the Duncans passed unheeded and unheard of.
All his leisure time was spent there, reading, drawing, teaching, gardening for them, and with them, and discussing his own plans and projects. Inspired by Hilary, and advised by her father, he did some very useful things: he built and endowed a school at the edge of his park, for some of the scattered population around; he improved the dwellings of the poor tenants,