“Well,” answered Forsyth, as smoothly and persuasively as he could, “but if you could give us your presence for a few minutes, Mary and I, I hope, will be able to manage the rest ourselves, and you know, my dear Mrs. Melville,” he added still more blandly, “I am anxious to come to an understanding with Mary as soon as possible. Come, you must add this to the many kindnesses you have done me already. You will consent, I see.”
Mrs. James could not resist. “Well then, on new year’s morning be here, and Mary shall meet you,” she said, and her gratified friend bows over her extended hand. “You may come, Mr. Forsyth, on new year’s morning.”
Mr. Forsyth can never sufficiently express his obligation; and having succeeded in all things according to his wish with Mrs. James Melville, he takes his leave at last, and rejoices as he hurries through the streets, so cold and bitter to other passengers, but so bright and cheerful to him in his present mood, that soon now he will be assured of Mary. He has no doubt about it, none at all, and he is certain that all that he wants is just this opportunity which Mrs. James is to secure him, and then Mary Melville will be his own, plighted and pledged his own.
It is but a few days, yet new year’s morning is as tardy in approach as if, so big with fate to that young, ingenious, and unfearful spirit, it lingered on its way willing to prolong her state of happy unconsciousness. The elegant Mr. Forsyth yawns through the long weary days; though it is the time of his own appointing he is impatient and restless, and his yawning and irksomeness is redoubled on that dull, cold, cheerless evening before its dawn, and he gets really nervous as the time draws near. Strange that one so practised in the world, whose heart has been so long a very superfluous piece of matter, should have his dead affections so powerfully awakened by the simple grace and girlish beauty of guileless Mary Melville. Strange, indeed, and if he is successful in winning her—as who can doubt he will—what hope is there for our sweet Mary when his sudden vehement liking passes into indifference. Poor Mary’s constant heart should be mated only with one as warm and as full of affection and tenderness as itself; but who shall have the choosing of their own future—alas, who! or who, if the choice was given them, would determine aright?—not Mary. But there is a power, the bridegroom in anticipation wots not of, ordering the very words which shall fall from his lips to-morrow, overruling the craftiness of his crafty and subtle spirit, and guarding the innocent simplicity of the prayer-protected girl, defending her from all ill.
CHAPTER II.
York. I’ll not be by, the while; My Liege, farewell;
What will ensue hereof, there’s none can tell;
But by bad courses may be understood
That these events can never fall out good.
King Richard the Second.
EW YEAR’S day at last arrived, the time so anxiously waited for by Forsyth; a cold clear winter morning; and Mary, invited specially by her sister-in-law, leaves home to help—to help in some little preparations for the evening, was the reason or plea assigned by Mrs. James to secure Mary on that morning; and even Christian had nothing to object to a request so reasonable, though it must be said that Christian did not like her sister to be much among Mrs. James’s friends. Nor had Mary herself been wont to like it either, but the Mary of a year ago is not the Mary of to-day; she has not grown indifferent to Christian’s wishes; very far from that, Mary was perhaps more nervously anxious to please Christian than ever in all lesser things; she felt that a kind of atonement, a satisfaction to her conscience, for her encouragement of the one engrossing feeling of her heart, of which she dared not indeed seek Christian’s approval. For the thought that in this most important particular she was deceiving, or at least disingenuous to her dearest friend, concealing from her what it so concerned her to know, gave Mary, acting thus contrary to her nature, many a secret pang. But though this secret clouded her brow and disturbed her peace at home, she hid it in her own heart. Still how strange that Mary should be lightsome and happier with her brother’s wife, whose character was in every respect so inferior to her own, than with her gentle sister; yet so it was, and Mary’s heart beat quicker when she entered James’s house, and quicker still when she saw there was some other visitor before her. Who it was she needed not to ask, for Forsyth sprung to her side, as she entered the cheerful room, with low-voiced salutation, and a glance that brought the blush to her cheek, and caused her fair head to bend over the merry little boy that came running to her knee, and hailed her as “Aunt Mary.”