“Thank you,” said Beauchamp, but without much gratification in his tone. He felt dissatisfied and uncomfortable, vexed with Gertrude, and yet more vexed that he could not exactly blame her. Her sentiments were neither exaggerated nor unreasonable; they were very much the same as what he had himself often expressed on similar subjects. Yet she had managed to take the bloom off his prospects, to insinuate a very unpleasant misgiving that after all he had not known what he was about. Gertrude read his feelings pretty correctly, but she derived little satisfaction from so doing. The thing was too far gone, she feared; of course there was the chance of the proverbial slip before the marriage actually took place, but so slender a contingency was not to be taken into account.
“No,” thought Mrs Eyrecourt, “it is sure to go through. Undesirable things always do, and these Wareborough people know what they are about.”
In her heart she was not without some feminine curiosity about Eugenia herself, her belongings, and the history of the whole affair, but the tone she had taken up would not allow her to show any such undignified interest. So Beauchamp and she walked up and down for a few minutes in silence; then Gertrude discovered it was growing chilly and returned to the house, leaving her brother to his cigar and solitude.
Volume Two—Chapter Eight.
Lookers-on.
Ah, love, there is no better life than this;
To have known love, how bitter a thing it is,
...
Yea, these that know not, shall they have such bliss?
Swinburne.
Mrs Eyrecourt drove her brother to the station the next morning in Addie’s pretty pony-carriage, which had been sent from Wylingham for the two or three weeks the Chancellors had originally intended to spend at Halswood. Gertrude was gentle and affectionate, anxious apparently to prove to Beauchamp the truth of her words that, whatever she might think of his conduct, it was too late in the day for any talk of quarrelling or coldness between them. She studiously avoided the subject of the previous evening’s conversation; only just at the last, when their drive was all but at an end, she asked one question.
“You did not tell me, Beauchamp, when it—when your marriage—is likely to be?” she said, with some hesitation. “Is any time fixed? Do you think it will be soon?”