“Poor fellows, indeed! I suppose Lady Mary thinks because she is an earl’s daughter she can do whatever she likes; introducing such people as these into the society of gentle-folks,” cried the mother. “Myra, don’t stand laughing there, but put on your things.”
“We need not go into their society unless we please,” said Myra.
“And to be sure an Earl’s daughter can do whatever she likes; no nonsense of that description will make her lose caste,” said the eldest Miss Witherington, turning away from the window with a sigh. This poor young lady, not being an Earl’s daughter, had not been able to do as she liked, or to marry as she liked, and she felt the difference far more keenly than her mother did, who was affected only in theory. This was one of the many scraps of neighbourly talk which went on at Harbour Green when the party from Tottenham’s were seen walking through the village to church. Lady Mary was an Earl’s daughter, and she did take it upon her to do precisely as she liked; but her neighbours directed most of their indignation upon her husband who had no such privileges, a man who was civil to everybody, and whom they all confessed, whenever they wanted anything of him, to be the best-natured fellow in the world.
The service in the little church was not so well-conducted as it might have been, had Lady Mary taken more interest in it; but still the lesser authorities had done something for the training of the choir, and a gentle Ritualism, not too pronounced as yet, kept everything in a certain good order. Lady Mary herself did not take the same honest and simple part in the devotions as her husband and children did; various parts of the service went against her views; she smiled a little as she listened to the sermon. A close observer might have noticed that, though she behaved with the most perfect decorum, as a great lady ought, she yet felt herself somewhat superior to all that was going on. I cannot say that Edgar noticed this on his first Sunday at Harbour Green, though he may have remarked it afterwards; but Edgar’s mind was not at the present moment sufficiently free to remark upon individual peculiarity. The sense of novelty or something else more exciting still worked in him, and left him in a state of vague agitation; and when the service being over, Lady Mary hurried on with the children, on pretence of calling on some one, and left Mr. Tottenham with Edgar, the young man felt his heart beat higher, and knew that the moment at last had come.
“Well, Earnshaw! you have not had much time to judge, it is true; but how do you think you like us?” said Mr. Tottenham. The question was odd, but the questioner’s face was as grave as that of a judge. “We are hasty people, and you are hasty,” he added, “so it is not so absurd as it might be; how do you think you shall like us? Now speak out, never mind our feelings. I am not asking you sentimentally, but from a purely business point of view.”
“I am so hasty a man,” said Edgar, laughing, with a much stronger sense of the comic character of the position than the other had, “that I made up my mind at sight, as one generally does; but since then you have so bribed me by kindness—”
“Then you do like us!” said Mr. Tottenham, holding out his hand, “I thought you would. Of course if you had not liked us our whole scheme would have come to nothing, and Mary had rather set her heart on it. You will be sure not to take offence, or to think us impertinent if I tell you what we thought?”
“One word,” said Edgar with nervous haste. “Tell me first what it has been that has made you take such a warm interest in me?”
Mr. Tottenham winced and twisted his slim long person as a man in an embarrassing position is apt to do. “Well,” he said, “Earnshaw, I don’t know that we can enter into it so closely as that. We have always taken an interest in you, since the time when you were a great friend of the Thornleigh’s and we were always hearing of you; and when you behaved so well in that bad business. And then some months ago we heard that you had been seen coming up from Scotland—travelling,” Mr. Tottenham added, with hesitation, “in the cheap way.”
“Who told you that?” Edgar’s curiosity gave a sharpness which he had not intended to his voice.