Hathercourt

by Mrs. Molesworth

“You give me credit for greater acuteness than I possess, Mary,” said Lilias calmly, bowing with dignified ease to the intruder; “it is not easy to recognise a voice one has not heard more than once or twice. But if you will come nearer the fire, Captain Beverley, we shall feel less mystified; and, Mary, do ring for lights.”

The calmness, and the dignity, and the ease were all lost upon the young man, and Lilias, had she been able to read his thoughts, would have been saved a good deal of constraint. He was only thinking how very pretty, how beautiful she was—this tall, fair, lily-like girl, as she stood in the firelight, her face and bright hair thrown into strong relief by the dusk of the rest of the room; and had she allowed herself simply at once to acknowledge her recognition, he would have been conscious of nothing but honest gratification. As it was, he really did feel awkward and uncomfortable; it seemed to him he had intruded without proper justification, and somehow this disagreeable sensation was increased by all he saw about him. It was not in the least what he had expected; the pretty, graceful-looking room, whose deficiencies the friendly gloom concealed, and whose best points were shown to advantage by the flickering, dancing light, the little tea-table so neatly set out, and the two girls themselves—the one with the bearing of a princess, and the other with a sort of straightforward unconsciousness worth all the “manners” ever taught or talked about—it was not in the least what he had expected, and he felt that he had been guilty of gross presumption in thus making his way into Mrs Western’s drawing-room. Once he had seen Lilias before, and admired her more than he had ever admired any one in his life, and when he had suddenly decided that, for the local information he was in quest of, there was no one to whom he could so fitly apply as to the Rector of Hathercourt, he had been conscious in the very bottom of his heart that, if he went over to see Mr Western, there would be a chance of seeing his daughter too. But he had not fancied he would see her in this sort of way—so he felt all his former ideas confused and unsettled.

Still it was very pleasant to find himself in the Rectory drawing-room; the outside chill and dreariness made the cheerful indoors all the more attractive, and, though feeling by no means sure that he had any business to be where he was, he had not the strength of mind to tear himself away, to get up from his low chair by the fire and the prospect of a cup of tea, and, with a proper amount of apology for his intrusion, to leave a message with the girls for their father and set off on his solitary, uncomfortable walk back again to Hathercourt Edge. So he sat still, and by thus doing, little though he knew it, passed the Rubicon.

Mary had disappeared, to return in a minute with a lighted lamp which she placed on a little table, her way of obeying her sister’s injunction to “ring for lights.” Then she stopped for a moment, hesitating, and Captain Beverley half rose from his chair.

“Shall I tell mamma tea is ready, Lilias?” she said, “and that Captain Beverley is here?”

“Yes, please do,” replied her sister, graciously. “My mother is not very well to-day,” she continued, turning to the young man, and almost for the first time directly addressing him, “at least, she has been rather upset by my brother’s going away, but I have no doubt she will come down, if you would like to see her.”

“Thank you,” said Captain Beverley, growing uncomfortable again, and yet feeling increasingly reluctant to take his departure. “I should be very sorry to disturb Mrs Western, but if she is coming down in any case,” he glanced at the tea-table, “perhaps—I should like to explain to her what I wanted to see Mr Western about.—I should like you to understand that I did not mean to come forcing my way here without a proper reason,” was the real thought in his mind, and somehow Lilias instinctively half divined it, and her dignity abated a little.

“Mary, please go and ask mamma to come down, if she can,” she said to her sister, and Mary went off on her errand.

“I have been leading a very lonely life the last few days,” said Captain Beverley, when he found that Miss Western was in no hurry to start a subject of conversation.

“Indeed,” said Lilias.