To this Lilias assented without objection; but that Monday was very slow in coming. Who could settle down to read history with a girl to whom a message would come in the middle of a lesson that Lord Bellendean in the library was "Fain, fain to see her, and would not take an answer from me," a commission which Miss Jean brought upstairs, breathless, one of the first mornings on which this duty was attempted.
"What is Lord Bellendean wanting?—it will be me he is wishful to see," Margaret said, rising up at once.
"Oh, Margaret, you know very well what the lad is wanting; but he will not take his answer from us. I was just greatly flustered, and I said I would let you know, but nothing will serve him but to see Lilias," Miss Jean said.
And, after the interview was over, is it to be supposed that a young creature who had just refused a prospective coronet could settle down again to the thirty years' war? Lilias took Lord Bellendean with great composure, but it was not to be expected that she could go so far as that. This was a very great event, as may be supposed. It crept out somehow, as such events do, all the village being aware that the young lord had driven to Murkley all alone that August morning, abandoning even the grouse, and that he had not even stayed to luncheon, but drove back again in an hour, looking very woebegone.
"She will have refused him, the wilful monkey; that is what comes of training up a girl to think so much of herself," Mrs. Seton said, with a countenance of awe. It took away her breath to think of such a wilful waste of the gifts of Providence. "If I thought any child of mine would show such conceit, it would break my heart—yes, yes, I am sure it would just break my heart. Conceit!—what could it be but conceit, and thinking far more of herself than she has any right to think? Would she like the Prince of Wales, I wonder?" cried the minister's wife.
"Let us hope she'll not be one of those that go through the wood and through the wood and take up with a crooked stick at the end," said Mrs. Stormont, grimly.
It was somewhat comforting to the latter lady to know of Lord Bellendean's discomfiture, too. But she, like Mrs. Seton, felt that the self-importance of the Murrays was almost beyond bearing. Who did they want for Lilias?—the Prince of Wales, as Mrs. Seton said; but he was a married man.
Thus Lilias lost the sympathy of her neighbour. Philip Stormont had shown symptoms of a desire to return to the position of hanger-on which he had occupied in town, but his mother, once so eager, no longer encouraged this wish.
"You will get nothing but slights and scorns from these Murrays," she said to her son. "Let them be; they are too grand for the like of us."
"It was all your doing, mother," said Philip, "that I ever went near them at all."