“That Mrs Dalrymple has been writing to her, and she wants to show me she won’t stand it,” thought Beauchamp. He was quite mistaken. Roma knew very little of his life at Wareborough, and, selfishly speaking, cared very little with whom, or to what extent, he chose to flirt. But she did care about the possibly serious results to himself, his sister, and, even indirectly, to herself, of his folly. And she had never been able to forget the bright, sweet face of Eugenia Laurence. She had, however, promised Gertrude to be most discreet in her conduct to Beauchamp. She had no wish to quarrel with him. She was resolved cautiously to steer clear of any sort of “scene.” There was no saying in what contradictory way an explanation with her might affect him, and her great desire was that, without any such crisis, he should gradually arrive at a tacit understanding of her complete indifference.
“Not that I ever have believed, or ever shall believe, he really cares about me,” she had said to her sister-in-law. “It is half of it contradiction, and the other half the accident of our having been so often thrown together when he had no better occupation. Beauchamp would not be Beauchamp if he had not some little affair on hand, and I daresay I am the only woman who has never in the least appreciated his attentions.”
She agreed with Mrs Eyrecourt, that if he would but have the sense to take a fancy to Adelaide Chancellor, it would be the best thing he could do; and she felt not a little provoked with Gertrude for showing her cards so plainly. It could not be helped, however, and now she felt conscious that she too had been foolish in approaching the subject of Eugenia.
“Whatever he has been doing, I cannot make it any better,” she thought, “and I may make it worse.”
So, though she was certain that he perfectly understood to what she referred, she expressed no incredulity when he calmly assured her he did not know to what special piece of advice she was alluding.
“Very well. If you have forgotten it so quickly, we will hope that in this case the cap didn’t fit,” she said, lightly.
And then she went on talking about other things with so evident a determination to avoid all subjects of close personal interest, that Beauchamp could not but follow her lead. And she made herself so pleasant that there was no excuse for his growing sulky. He said to himself she was perverse and tiresome—very few fellows would put up with it as he did, and so on; but in his inmost heart he was not sorry that just at present no love-making seemed to be expected of him; for, after all, he did not feel quite as much inclined for it as usual. More than once during the day his spirits seemed suddenly to desert him. He would find his thoughts straying to the dull house in the outskirts of Wareborough, where, ignore it as he would, he knew full well a girlish heart was growing heavy at his unwonted absence.
“Her father will get my note to-morrow,” he reflected; “and then she won’t expect me any more, and she will soon be all right. Besides, I prepared her for it on Saturday, and she did not seem much surprised. There is nothing to bother about. I have acted for the best, only she is such a queer sort of girl—takes things to heart so. And Roma has evidently not forgotten about her.”
Very evidently Roma had not forgotten about her. Two or three times in the course of the day, she surprised Beauchamp in an absent fit, and disgusted him greatly by inquiring what he was thinking about, what was the matter, what had become of his good spirits, etc, etc, so that by the afternoon, Captain Chancellor had come to feel almost glad that their family party was to be augmented by the expected guests.
As the hour drew near at which the Chancellors were to arrive, Mrs Eyrecourt got quite into a flutter of excitement. Such a state of things was very unusual with her, well accustomed as she was to society and its usages. Beauchamp felt amused. “It is all on my account, I fear, that poor Gertrude is in such a fuss. She is only laying up disappointment for herself. I do wish she would leave me to manage my own affairs,” he thought to himself, though to please her he hung about the house idle all the afternoon, in case of the Halswood party possibly appearing before their time. Gertrude’s excitement was not only on his account, keenly anxious though she was that he and Adelaide Chancellor should impress each other agreeably; there was to Mrs Eyrecourt a peculiar and not unnatural feeling of gratification in receiving as her guests for the first time the head of the family—Mr Chancellor of Halswood himself—and his belongings. For, undoubted as was the position of the Winsley Eyrecourts in their own county and among their own set, that of the owner of Halswood was several pegs higher in the social scale, and Herbert Chancellor had more reason than many people for thinking himself rather a big man. But this second cause of his sister’s “fuss,” Beauchamp’s less excitable, more individually selfish nature neither suspected nor would have sympathised with. It was all very well to “call cousins” with the Halswood people; but Gertrude sometimes bothered herself unnecessarily. In her place, Beauchamp said to himself, he certainly would not have gone out of his way to invite these strangers to take up their abode with them for a whole week. He felt bored even in anticipation. He hoped certainly Roma’s attention would be distracted from teasing him with those silly questions of hers, but he more than half wished he was back at Wareborough.