The stranger’s hall.”
“Have you any commands to Mrs. Montgomery, my Lord?” inquired Edmund, who was writing at a small table, while most of our party were engaged at a larger one with breakfast.
“Oh yes!” said Lord Arandale. “Pray tell her that I shall send Lauson over to the Craigs: indeed that I shall go there myself, after the races.”
Julia and Frances now entered.
Shortly after, rising and going towards Edmund, he bent over the table and said, in an under tone, “I wish you would just tell my sister (it will save me a letter, and I am much hurried) that the Marquis of H⸺ has declared his intention of making proposals for Julia, (in due time,) and that, I think she had better write to Lord L⸺. I wish he could be at home. Yet, the connexion is so very eligible that all unnecessary delays should be avoided. Julia’s own pretensions, in fact, rank so high, that the peerage affords few that can be termed equal matches for her. Her affections cannot be pre-engaged?” he added, in a sort of consulting whisper. “Henry behaves very foolishly; but, I should hope, there was no attachment on her side. The thing, however, must be put an end to!”
Lord Arandale returned to the breakfast table, and left our hero, as he supposed, writing. Julia was the only person who observed that he remained in the very same attitude, and without the slightest motion, till the carriages drove up. She contrived in the general move, to pass near the table at which he sat, where, pausing a moment, she said, “Are you writing to grandmamma, Edmund?”
He had been quite pale when she first approached, and evidently had not observed her. He started at the sound of her voice, and looked at her without appearing to comprehend the purport of her enquiry, but made no reply. “Are you writing to grandmamma?” she repeated, “because, I wish——” He examined his paper two or three times from top to bottom, and then replied, “I—was—”
Henry came up at the moment, and, offering to Julia his arm, which she now dare not refuse, hurried her to the carriage. She perceived, with much vexation, that he wore, drawn across his breast, the scarf he had snatched from her. He continued, in defiance of a whispered remonstrance on her part, to sport it for some hours. He knew that Edmund was well aware to whom the scarf belonged. At length, Lord Arandale perceiving what was going on, insisted on the scarf being resigned. The Earl restored it himself to Julia, with a reproachful glance; to which she replied, that the scarf had been both taken and worn without her permission.