“Frances,” said the little man. “I told you—the best of the lot. I took to her in a moment by that very token. Therefore, don’t go too fast with her, mother. She has her own notions. She is as stanch as a little—Turk,” said Markham, using the first word that offered. When he met his mother’s eye, he retired a little, with the air of a man who does not mean to be questioned; which naturally stimulated curiosity in her mind.
“How have you found out that she is stanch, Markham?”
“Oh, in half-a-dozen ways,” he answered, carelessly. “And she will stick to her father through thick and thin, so mind what you say.”
Then Lady Markham began to bemoan herself a little gently, before the fire, in the most luxurious of easy-chairs.
“Was ever woman in such a position,” she said, “to be making acquaintance, for the first time, at eighteen, with my own daughter—and to have to pick my words and to be careful what I say?”
“Well, mammy,” said Markham, “it might have been worse. Let us make the best of it. He has always kept his word, which is something, and has never annoyed you. And it is quite a nice thing for Con to have him to go to, to find out how dull it is, and know her own mind. And now we’ve got the other one too.”
Lady Markham still rocked herself a little in her chair, and put her handkerchief to her eyes. “For all that, it is very hard, both on her and me,” she said.
CHAPTER XXII.
Lady Markham’s story was one which was very well known to Society—to which everything is known—though it had remained so long a secret, and was still a mystery to one of her children. Waring had been able to lose himself in distance, and keep his position concealed from every one; but it was clear that his wife could not do so, remaining as she did in the world which was fully acquainted with her, and which required an explanation of everything that happened. Perhaps it is more essential to a woman than to a man that her position should be fully explained, though it is one of the drawbacks of an established place and sphere, which is seldom spoken of, yet is very real, and one of the greatest embarrassments of life. So long as existence is without complications, this matters little; but when these arise, those difficulties which so often distract the career of a family, the inevitable explanations that have to be made to the little interested ring of spectators, is often the worst part of domestic trouble. Waring, whose temperament was what is called sensitive—that is, impatient, self-willed, and unenduring—would not submit to such a necessity. But a woman cannot fly; she must stand in her place, if she has any regard for that place, and for the reputation which it is common to say is more delicate and easily injured than is that of a man—and make her excuse to the world. Perhaps, as, sooner or later, excuses and explanations must be afforded, it is the wiser plan to get over them publicly and at once; for even Waring, as has been seen, though he escaped, and had a dozen years of tranquillity, had at the last to submit himself to the questions of Mr Durant. All that was over for these dozen years with Lady Markham. Everybody knew exactly what her position was. Scandal had never breathed upon her, either at the moment of the separation or afterwards. It had been a foolish, romantic love-marriage between a woman of Society and a man who was half rustic, half scholar. They had found after a time that they could not endure each other—as anybody with a head on his shoulders could have told them from the beginning, Society said. And then he had taken the really sensible though wild and romantic step of banishing himself and leaving her free. There were some who had supposed this a piece of bizarre generosity, peculiar to the man, and some who thought it only a natural return to the kind of life that suited him best.
Lady Markham had, of course, been censured for this, her second marriage; and equally, of course, was censured for the breach of it—for the separation, which, indeed, was none of her doing; for retaining her own place when her husband left her; and, in short, for every step she had taken in the matter from first to last. But that was twelve years ago, which is a long time in all circumstances, and which counts for about a century in Society: and nobody thought of blaming her any longer, or of remarking at all upon the matter. The present lords and ladies of fashionable life had always known her as she was, and there was no further question about her history. When, in the previous season, Miss Waring had made her début in Society, and achieved the success which had been so remarkable, there was indeed a little languid question as to who was her father among those who remembered that Waring was not the name of the Markham family; but this was not interesting enough to cause any excitement. And Frances, still thrilling with the discovery of the other life, of which she had never suspected the existence, and ignorant even now of everything except the mere fact of it, suddenly found herself embraced and swallowed up in a perfectly understood and arranged routine in which there was no mystery at all.