“I suppose you are going home for Christmas, Roland? Shall you all be at home? Alice and her baby, and every one of you?” Rosalind breathed softly a little sigh. “I don’t like Christmas,” she said; “it is all very well so long as you are quite young, but when you begin to get scattered and broken up—”
“My dear, I am far from being quite young, and I hope I have been scattered as much as anybody, and had every sort of thing to put up with, but I never grow too old or too dull for Christmas.”
“Ah, Aunt Sophy, you! But then you are not like anybody else; you take things so sweetly, even Rex and his impertinence.”
“Christmas is pleasant enough,” said young Hamerton. “We are not so much scattered but that we can all get back, and I like it well enough. But,” he added, “if one was wanted elsewhere, or could be of use, I am not such a fanatic for home but that I could cut it once in a way, if there was anything, don’t you know, Mrs. Lennox, that one would call a duty; like licking a young cub into shape, or helping a—people you are fond of.” He blushed and laughed, in the genial, confusing glow of the fire, and cast a glance at Rosalind to see whether she noted his offer, and understood the motive of it. “People one is fond of;” did she think that meant Aunt Sophy? There was a pleasant mingling of obscurity and light even when the cheerful flame leaped up and illuminated the room: something in its leaping and uncertainty made a delightful shelter. You might almost stare at the people you were fond of without being betrayed as the cold daylight betrays you; and as for the heat which he felt suffuse his countenance, that was altogether unmarked in the genial glow of the cheerful fire.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
In an easy house, where punctuality is not rampant, the hour before dinner is pleasant to young people. The lady of the house is gone to dress. If she is beginning to feel the weight of years, she perhaps likes a nap before dinner, and in any case she will change her dress in a leisurely manner and likes to have plenty of time; and the children have been carried off to the nursery that their toilet may be attended to, and no hurried call afterwards interfere with the tying of their sashes. The young lady of the house is not moved by either of these motives. Five minutes is enough for her, she thinks and says, and the room is so cosey and the half light so pleasant, and it is the hour for confidences. If she has another girl with her, they will drift into beginnings of the most intimate narrative, which must be finished in their own rooms after everybody has gone to bed; and if it is not a girl, but the other kind of companion, those confidences are perhaps even more exciting. Rosalind knew what Roland Hamerton wanted, vaguely: she was, on the surface, not displeased with his devotions. She had no intention of coming to so very decided a step as marriage, nor did she for a moment contemplate him as the lover whose absence surprised her. But he was nice enough. She liked well enough to talk to him. They were like brother and sister, she would have said. “Roland—why, I have known him all my life,” she would have exclaimed indignantly to any one who had blamed her for “encouraging” this poor young man. Indeed, Rosalind was so little perfect that she had already on several occasions defended herself in this way, and had not the slightest intention of accepting Roland, and yet allowed him to persuade her to linger and talk after Aunt Sophy had gone up-stairs. This was quite unjustifiable, and a more high-minded young woman would not have done it. But poor Rosalind, though her life had been crossed by a strain of tragedy and though her feelings were very deep and her experiences much out of the common, and her mind capable and ready to respond to very high claims, was yet not the ideal of a high-minded girl. It is to be hoped that she was unacquainted with flirtation and above it, but yet she did not dislike—so long as she could skilfully keep him from anything definite in the way of a proposal, anything that should be compromising and uncomfortable to sit and listen to—the vague adoration which was implied in Hamerton’s talk, and to feel that the poor young fellow was laying himself out to please her. It did please her, and it amused her—which was more. It was sport to her, though it might be death to him. She did not believe that there was anything sufficiently serious in young Hamerton’s feelings or in his character to involve anything like death, and she judged with some justice that he preferred the happiness of the moment, even if it inspired him with false hopes, to the collapse of all those hopes which a more conscientious treatment would have brought about. Accordingly, Rosalind lingered in the pleasant twilight. She sent her aunt’s butler, Saunders, away when he appeared to light the lamps.
“Not yet, Saunders,” she said, “we like the firelight,” in a manner which made Roland’s heart jump. It seemed to that deceived young man that nothing but a flattering response of sentiment in her mind would have made Rosalind, like himself, enjoy the firelight. “That was very sweet of you,” he said.
“What was sweet of me?” The undeserved praise awakened a compunction in her. “There is nothing good in saying what is true. I do like talking by this light. Summer evenings are different, they are always a little sad; but the fire is cheerful, and it makes people confidential.”
“If I could think you wanted me to be confidential, Rosalind!”
“Oh, I do; everybody! I like to talk about not only the outside, but what people are really thinking of. One hears so much of the outside: all the runs you have had, and how Captain Thornton jumps, and Miss Plympton keeps the lead.”