There was, in fact, no foundation whatever for any alarm. Never had the credit of Dirom, Dirom and Company stood higher. There was no cloud, even so big as a finger, upon the sky.
Mr. Dirom himself, though his children were ashamed of him, was not without acceptance in society. In his faithfulness to business, staying in town in September, he had a choice of fine houses in which to make those little visits from Saturday to Monday which are so pleasant; and great ladies who had daughters inquired tenderly about Fred, and learned with the profoundest interest that it was he who was the Prince of Wales, the heir-apparent of the house, he, and not Jack the married son, who would have nothing to say to the business.
When Fred paid a flying visit to town to “look up the governor,” as he said, and see what was going on, he too was overwhelmed with invitations from Saturday to Monday. And though he was modest enough he was very well aware that he would not be refused, as a son-in-law, by some of the finest people in England.
That he was not a little dazzled by the perception it would be wrong to say—and the young Lady Marys in English country houses are very fair and sweet. But now there would glide before him wherever he went the apparition of Effie in her white frock.
Why should he have thought of Effie, a mere country girl, yet still a country gentlewoman without the piquancy of a milkmaid or a nursery governess? But who can fathom these mysteries? No blooming beauty of the fields had come in Fred’s way, though he had piously invoked all the gods to send him such a one: but Effie, who was scarcely a type at all—Effie, who was only a humble representative of fair maidenhood, not so perfect, perhaps, not so well dressed, not so beautiful as many of her kind.
Effie had come across his path, and henceforward went with him in spirit wherever he went. Curious accident of human fate! To think that Mr. Dirom’s money, and Fred’s accomplishments, and their position in society and in the city, all things which might have made happy a duke’s daughter, were to be laid at the careless feet of little Effie Ogilvie!
If she had been a milkmaid the wonder would have been less great.
CHAPTER VII.
And for all these things Effie cared nothing. This forms always a tragic element in the most ordinary love-making, where one gives what the other does not appreciate, or will not accept, yet the giver cannot be persuaded to withdraw the gift, or to follow the impulse of that natural resentment which comes from kindness disdained.
There was nothing tragical, however, in the present circumstances, which were largely composed of lawn tennis at Allonby, afternoon tea in the dimness of an unnecessarily shaded room, or walks along the side of the little stream. When Effie came for the favourite afternoon game, the sisters and their brother would escort her home, sometimes all the way, sometimes only as far as the little churchyard where the path struck off and climbed the high river bank.