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.
Nothing could be more pleasant than this walk. The days were often gray and dim; but the walkers were young, and not too thinly clad; the damp in the air did not affect them, and the breezes stirred their veins. The stream was small but lively, brown, full of golden lights. So far as the park went the bank was low on the Allonby side, though on the other picturesque, with rising cliffs and a screen of trees. In the lower hollows of these cliffs the red of the rowan berries and the graceful bunches of the barberry anticipated the autumnal tints, and waving bracken below, and a host of tiny ferns in every crevice, gave an air of luxuriance. The grass was doubly green with that emerald brightness which comes from damp, and when the sun shone everything lighted up with almost an artificial glow of excessive colour, greenness, and growth. The little party would stroll along filling the quiet with their young voices, putting even the birds to silence.
But it was not Effie who talked. She was the audience, sometimes a little shocked, sometimes bewildered, but always amused more or less; wondering at them, at their cleverness, at their simplicity, at what the country girl thought their ignorance, and at what she knew to be their superior wisdom.
Fred too was remarkable on these points, but not so remarkable as his sisters; and he did not talk so much. He walked when he could by Effie’s side, and made little remarks to her, which Effie accounted for by the conviction that he was very polite, and thought it right to show her those regards which were due to a young lady. She lent but a dull ear to what he said, and gave her chief attention to Phyllis and Doris, whose talk was more wonderful than anything else that Effie knew.