Thus she felt in certain moods. There were others, however, in which her faith was less undoubting, in which she almost questioned if she had not exaggerated what he had said; whether after all it had not been with Ralph a much less serious affair than, to her cost, it had been with her? Then again she seemed drawn the other way. His was no slight or shallow nature. Were his depth and earnestness to be doubted, in what could she ever allow herself to believe? And so the poor child was tossed and torn. Still, it came to pass, thanks to Geoffrey Baldwin, that a little more brightness and enjoyment were at this time infused into her daily life. The riding proved a success, and, as her young guardian observed with self-congratulation, “really did bring some colour to her cheeks.”
The Copley girls came up to Mr. Baldwin’s favourable account of them, and did their best in the way of showing kindness to “that pretty, pale Miss Vere, that Geoffrey Baldwin is so taken up about.” They were hearty, healthy girls, and both engaged to be married to the most satisfactory partis. Possibly this last had something to say to their cordial reception of their old friend’s interesting ward.
The renewal of her acquaintance with the invalid Miss Temple, was also in a different way a source of great pleasure to Marion. Trifling incidents both—her introduction to the Copley girls, and her meeting again with the kind Veronica—but they both influenced her indirectly in the great decision of her life, towards which, though she knew it not, the tide of affairs was rapidly drawing her.
[CHAPTER] VIII.
AND RALPH?
“Learn by a mortal yearning to ascend
Seeking a higher object.”—LAODAMIA.
“For love and beauty and delight
There is no death nor change; their might
Exceeds our organs, which endure
No light, being themselves obscure.”
THE SENSITIVE PLANT.
AH, yes! What of Ralph? Through all these months, to Marion so weary with suspense and ever-recurring disappointment, what had he been about? How came it that he, whom we have heard vowing to himself that her happiness should be his first consideration, had allowed her thus to suffer, when, as we know, a word from him at any moment would have set all right, would have made the world rosy again, and filled with sunlight even the grim old house at Mallingford?
To explain it all, to show what a strange chain of commonplace mistakes and cross-purposes had, coupled with one small act of deliberate malice, effected all the mischief, tortured with doubt and misgiving two true hearts, and altogether changed the course of two, if not three, lives—to make all this clear, we must step back some way: to the very time, indeed, we last heard of Ralph. Heard of him, only, incidentally, as having been successful in obtaining the promise of Sir Archibald, or rather, through his influence, that of the powers that be in such matters, with respect to the expected consular vacancy at A—.