Jean looked up with a little surprise at this speech. "I have no desire," she said, "my dear Margaret, to set up my judgment in that way. We're one, we're not two, we have always been of the same mind. Perhaps we will hear something more satisfactory about his family; for I have a real hope you will take the young man up. He has very nice manners, and his touch is just extraordinary. It would be such a good thing for Lilias, too. To see him at the piano is better than many a lesson. So I hope you will take the best view you can of him. To bring him to dinner was very startling to me, but it is fine that Lilias has such a sense of hospitality."
All this Jean said with a manner so entirely undisturbed that Margaret could not tell what to think. It was she who was abashed and confused—she who had supposed it possible that her sister could be moved by the young man's nonsense. Indeed, when she came to think it over, she felt almost a conviction that it was she herself who was mistaken. Jean evidently was totally unenlightened in respect to any intentions he might have. It must have been she who had made the mistake. She was not fond of acknowledging herself in the wrong, even to herself, but it was fortunate at least that no one else knew the delusion she had been under, and still more fortunate that now that delusion was past.
[CHAPTER XX.]
The framework of society at Murkley was of a simple description. There were no great gatherings in that corner of the countryside. A dinner-party happened now and then, but these were very rare, for most of the best families dined in the middle of the day in a primitive manner, and a great dinner meant an overthrow of all the habits of the house. Usually friends came to tea, and remained, as in the manse, when the majority was young, to dance: or in other houses, when the majority were older people, to play a friendly rubber, with a round game for such youth as might be of the party. The routine was completely stereotyped; for human nature is very uninventive, especially in the country. Sometimes there was an attempt to vary this procedure by "a little music;" but in those days music was less cultivated than now, and a few pieces of the "Battle of Prague" kind, were usually all that were to be found in a young lady's repertoire, varied perhaps by "Sweet Spirit, hear my Prayer," and other elegant morceaux of that description. And it is much to be feared that, had the music been of a higher order, it would have been relished still less; for however little the art of conversation may be cultivated as an art, and however little entertainment there may be in it, everybody resents the stoppage of talk, and the gloomy countenance of even the most æsthetic of parties, when compelled to silent listening, continues to prove how much more attractive are our own sweet voices than anything that supersedes them. Society in Murkley would willingly put up with a few songs. It is true that it knew them by heart, but the good people were always charitable on this point, and liked, "Oh, no, we never mention her!" just as well the hundredth time as the first. And there was another thing which many of the elder ladies could do without any vanity on the subject, or even any idea that the gift was more than a convenience. They played dance music with the greatest spirit and accuracy. Mrs. Seton possessed this talent, and so to some extent did Mrs. Stormont, though she put it to less frequent use, and had not the real enjoyment which the minister's wife had in the exercise of her talent. These ladies were surprised to be complimented on the subject. It was no credit to them. It was "just a necessity where there are young people," Mrs. Seton said; a sort of maternal accomplishment which everybody took for granted. But though the entertainments and social constitution were so simple, the same schemes and hopes underlay them as were to be found on the highest levels. It was, as has been said, the dearest object of Miss Margaret's heart to keep her little sister safe, and preserve her from all youthful entanglements of sentiment. But Mrs. Stormont of the Tower had a dearest object which was entirely in opposition to Margaret's. Her dream was to secure for her own Philip this very lily of Murkley which was kept so persistently in the shade. Mrs. Stormont had been an old friend of the General; they had called themselves old friends for years with a twinkle in the eye of one and a conscious smile upon the corners of the other's mouth, which would have betrayed their little secret had not the countryside in general known it as well as they did. They had been, in fact, lovers in their youth, and all the skill of their respective families had been exercised once upon a time to keep them apart. The attempt had been quite successful, and neither Mrs. Stormont nor the General had been sorry in after-life. They had talked it over with a laugh when they met again, more than twenty years after, each with a little mental comment. It was shortly after the General's second marriage, when, in the pride and triumph of having won for himself so young and delightful a bride, he too felt himself delightful and young as in his best days.
"Good Lord! to think I might have been tied to that old woman!" he said to himself. She was some years younger than he was, and a handsome woman, but she was not like Lady Lilias at eighteen.
Mrs. Stormont's reflections were of a different order. She went about all day after, saying, "Tchich-tchich," to herself at intervals, or rather making that little sound with the tongue upon the palate which is the language of mild astonishment mingled with dismay. "He promised to be a man of sense when I knew him," Mrs. Stormont said, and the thought of what "a handful" she would have found him gave her a sense of exhilaration in her escape: thus they were mutually contented that they had not become one; but yet there was a little consciousness between them. They would laugh and look at each other when certain things were said. They had a good-humoured contempt each for the other, and yet a certain charity. And, when the pretty young wife was cut off, Mrs. Stormont was very sorry. "Poor thing, she is no doubt taken from the evil to come," she said, devoutly, with a sense that Lady Lilias too, when she grew older, might have found her handsome General "a handful."
But this was partially a mistake on Mrs. Stormont's part, for the General never did very much harm short of quarrelling with his father. She was so far justified, however, that secretly, at the bottom of her heart, it is not to be denied, Miss Margaret agreed with her. It was long before the General's death, however, that Mrs. Stormont had formed her plans. Philip was the only child left to her after the loss of many. She did not adore him in the ordinary way; she formed to herself no delusions as to his excellence, but knew him as what he was, an honest fellow, who would never set the Tay, let alone the Thames, on fire. It was a disappointment to his mother that he was not clever, but she had made up her mind to that. But she felt that he could not help more or less making a figure in the county if it could be secured for him that he should have Lilias Murray to be his wife.
Everything is relative in human society. Lilias was poor in the estimation of the people whom her sisters would have considered her equals: and they know her to be poor, they who were supplementing her importance by their own, maintaining the little state they thought necessary out of their own means, and allowing the income of Murkley, such as it was, to accumulate for their child: and all the parents of the wealthy young gentlemen whom Miss Margaret might have smiled upon as suitors for Lilias would have considered her poor. But to Mrs. Stormont she was an heiress and a person of importance. The revenues of Lilias, added to his own, would make Philip, if not a great man, at least one who had to be taken into account, who would be reckoned upon at an election, who might even stand for the county. He was of a good family, and Lilias was of a better. They would supplement each other, and increase each other's consequence. In no other way was it likely that he could do half as well. He might get more money, Mrs. Stormont said to herself, but money was not everything. The last Stormont of the Tower married to the last Murray of Murkley would have a position which the duke himself must pay respect to. She had thought of this for years. When Lilias was a child she had been regaled with the finest gooseberries in the garden; little parties had been assembled for her, the first and the last strawberries reserved for her, with cream in which the spoon would "stand alone." Mrs. Stormont had never intermitted these delicate attentions. She stroked the girl's fair locks every time they met, and said, "I might have been your mother," with a laugh and a sigh. It had distressed Miss Margaret to see that these soft seductions had a great deal of effect upon the girl, and she had indeed been injudicious enough to do everything she could to push Philip's claims by a continual depreciation of them.
"That long-leggit lad," she had been in the habit of calling him, until Lilias had been roused to ask,