"There is some dancing or nonsense going on at the manse, I hear—or was it last night?" said Mrs. Stormont at dinner, secure in the confidence that no invitation had come for her son. "I am very thankful that they have seen the uselessness of it, and given up asking you, Philip."
"Oh! I can go if I like," Philip said.
"But you have too much sense to mix yourself up with their village parties," said his mother.
To this Philip made no reply. His pride was touched at once by the suggestion that he was not asked, and by the idea that his good sense had to be appealed to. This is always an offensive idea. He did not go up to the drawing-room after dinner. In spite of himself, the contrast between the dull warmth of the fireside, where his mother sat with her book and her knitting, and the lively scene on the other side of the water, struck him more and more forcibly. Mothers are all very well in their way, but they pall upon the sense of young men. He went out to the door, and the fresh, damp night air, as it flew in his face, seemed to carry upon it a far-off sound of the music. To be sure, this was impossible, but it mattered little to Philip; he heard it all the same, he knew the very waltz which at that moment Mrs. Seton would be playing. What need to follow all the steps of the short and half-hearted straggle? They were in full career of gaiety in the manse drawing-room, when Philip strayed in, half-afraid of the reception he might receive.
"Oh! Mr. Philip, is this you? You are just a great stranger," cried Mrs. Seton. "But there is Alice Bairnsfaither not dancing; you are just come in time."
[CHAPTER XLVI.]
The days were very long in Murkley that winter. It was not a brisk, frosty winter, with ice and skating and curling, and all the cheerful activities with which the strong and young set winter at defiance. Everything of the kind, every attempt at pleasure out of doors, melted away in the rain. The roads were deep in mud, the fields were sodden, the river almost in flood, the skies so laden and so low that you could almost have touched them, with your hand—so, at least, the country folk in their bold phraseology, described them. Jean's table-cover was almost done. She was able to sit at it, she said, as she never had been before. There was little variety in the life of the ladies at Murkley. There had never been much variety in their life; though, now that Lilias was acknowledged to be "out," it might have been supposed that their engagements would have increased. But this was not the case. Lilias had signalized herself by closing two houses in the country upon them at once. Murray was a name which was not now pronounced before the Countess, who was gayer than usual, and gave several parties, as Margaret firmly believed, for the sole purpose of making it appear that the sisters were shut out.
"But I never blame her, poor woman; for no doubt it was a great mortification," Margaret said, with proud triumph.
And the break with Mrs. Stormont had never been healed. Philip indeed had returned to his old friendliness, as he had returned to other bonds, but his mother stood out. Thus they were shut up a little more than usual to their own resources, and Lilias, if she had taken advantage of her opportunities, ought to have known all about the thirty years' war. It was a long, long time before any reply came to their letters, and, when it arrived, it was not satisfactory. Lewis had been travelling with his chief. He was so engaged to his chief that he could not get free to answer in person, as he would have wished. He answered Margaret by the intimation that, in case he should die in the mean time, he had left everything by will to Lilias, which was an arrangement which could not be found fault with, though he hoped to find some other immediate solution when he came home. Even his letter to Jean was subdued and sad in tone. He seemed unable to believe that she was right in the confidence of her hopes; he thought his good-fortune had forsaken him, and that it was contempt, not tenderness, which had made Lilias tear up his offering. "She would not take even her right from my hands." Miss Jean wept much over this epistle. She avowed that she ought to have understood the perversity of man.