The only gleam in the grey of his life since he had determined about Christmas-time to settle down at the Court had come from Mr. French's letter. That letter, together with Mr. Boyce's posthumous note, which contained nothing, indeed, but a skilful appeal to neighbourliness and old family friendship, written in the best style of the ex-Balkan Commissioner, had naturally astonished him greatly. He saw at once what she would perceive in it, and turned impatiently from speculation as to what Mr. Boyce might actually have meant, to the infinitely more important matter, how she would take her father's act. Never had he written anything with greater anxiety than he devoted to his letter to Mrs. Boyce. There was in him now a craving he could not stay, to be brought near to her again, to know how her life was going. It had first raised its head in him since he knew that her existence and Wharton's were finally parted, and had but gathered strength from the self-critical loneliness and tedium of these later months.
Mrs. Boyce's reply couched in terms at once stately and grateful, which accepted his offer of service on her own and her daughter's behalf, had given him extraordinary pleasure. He turned it over again and again, wondering what part or lot Marcella might have had in it, attributing to her this cordiality or that reticence; picturing the two women together in their black dresses—the hotel, the pergola, the cliff—all of which he himself knew well. Finally, he went up to town, saw Mr. French, and acquainted himself with the position and prospects of the Mellor estate, feeling himself a sort of intruder, yet curiously happy in the business. It was wonderful what that poor sickly fellow had been able to do in the last two years; yet his thoughts fell rather into amused surmise as to what she would find it in her restless mind to do in the next two years.
Nevertheless, all the time, the resolution of which he had spoken to Hallin seemed to himself unshaken. He recognised and adored the womanly growth and deepening which had taken place in her; he saw that she wished to show him kindness. But he thought he could trust himself now and henceforward not to force upon her a renewed suit for which there was in his eyes no real or abiding promise of happiness.
Marcella and her mother had now been at home some three or four days, and he was just about to walk over to Mellor for his first interview with them. A great deal of the merely formal business consequent on Mr. Boyce's death had been already arranged by himself and Mr. French. Yet he had to consult Marcella as to certain investments, and in a pleasant though quite formal little note he had that morning received from her she had spoken of asking his advice as to some new plans for the estate. It was the first letter she herself had as yet written to him; hitherto all his correspondence had been carried on with Mrs. Boyce. It had struck him, by the way, as remarkable that there was no mention of the wife in the will. He could only suppose that she was otherwise provided for. But there had been some curious expressions in her letters.
Where was Frank? Aldous looked impatiently at the clock, as Roberts did not reappear. He had invited Leven to walk with him to Mellor, and the tiresome boy was apparently not to be found. Aldous vowed he would not wait a minute, and going into the hall, put on coat and hat with most business-like rapidity.
He was just equipped when Roberts, somewhat breathless with long searching, arrived in time to say that Sir Frank was on the front terrace.
And there Aldous caught sight of the straight though somewhat heavily built figure, in its grey suit with the broad band of black across the arm.
"Hullo, Frank! I thought you were to look me up in the library. Roberts has been searching the house for you."
"You said nothing about the library," said the boy, rather sulkily, "and Roberts hadn't far to search. I have been in the smoking-room till this minute."
Aldous did not argue the point, and they set out. It was presently clear to the elder man that his companion was not in the best of tempers. The widowed Lady Leven had sent her firstborn over to the Court for a few days that Aldous might have some discussion as to his immediate future with the young man. She was a silly, frivolous woman; but it was clear, even to her, that Frank was not doing very well for himself in the world; and advice she would not have taken from her son's Oxford tutor seemed cogent to her when it came from a Raeburn. "Do at least, for goodness' sake, get him to give up his absurd plan of going to America!" she wrote to Aldous; "if he can't take his degree at Oxford, I suppose he must get on without it, and certainly his dons seem very unpleasant. But at least he might stay at home and do his duty to me and his sisters till he marries, instead of going off to the 'Rockies' or some other ridiculous place. He really never seems to think of Fanny and Rachel, or what he might do to help me to get them settled now that his poor father is gone."