“I see no reason why you should not both go,” said Mrs. Ochterlony: “one of you shall take care of Nelly, and one shall do my commissions; I think that had better be Will—for I put no confidence, just now, in Hugh.”
“Of course it must be Will,” said Hugh. “A squire of dames requires age and solidity. It is not an office for a younger brother. Your time will come, old fellow; it is mine now.”
“Yes, I suppose it is yours now,” said Will.
He did not mean to put any extraordinary significance in his tone, but yet he was in such a condition of mind that his very voice betrayed him against his will. Even Winnie, preoccupied as she was, intermitted her own thoughts a moment to look at him, and Hugh reddened, though he could not have told why. There was a certain menace, a certain implication of something behind, which the inexperienced boy had no intention of betraying, but which made themselves apparent in spite of him. And Hugh too grew crimson in spite of himself. He said “By Jove!” and then he laughed, and cleared his mind of it, feeling it absurd to be made angry by the petulance of his boy-brother. Then he turned to Nelly, who had drawn closer to him, fearing that the quarrel was about to take place as it takes place in novels, trembling a little, and yet by the aid of her own good sense, feeling that it could not be so serious after all.
“If we are going to the Lady’s Well we must go early,” he said; and his face changed when he turned to her. She was growing prettier every day,—every day at least she spent in Hugh’s society,—opening and unfolding as to the sun. Her precocious womanliness, if it had been precocious, melted under the new influence, and all the natural developments were quickened. She was more timid, more caressing, less self-reliant, and yet she was still as much as ever head of the house at home.
“But not if it will vex Will,” she said, almost in a whisper, in his ear; and the close approach which this whisper made necessary, effaced in an instant all unbrotherly feelings towards Wilfrid from Hugh’s mind. They both looked at Will, instinctively, as they spoke, the girl with a little wistful solicitude in case he might be disturbed by the sight of their confidential talk. But Will was quite unmoved. He saw the two draw closer together, and perceived the confidential communication that passed between them, but his countenance did not change in the slightest degree. By this time he was far beyond that.
“You see he does not mind,” said Hugh, carrying on the half-articulate colloquy, of which one half was done by thoughts instead of words; and Nelly, with the colour a little deepened on her cheek, looked up at him with a look which Hugh could not half interpret. He saw the soft brightness, the sweet satisfaction in it tinged by a certain gleam of fun, but he did not see that Nelly was for a moment ashamed of herself, and was asking herself how she ever could, for a moment, have supposed Will was jealous. It was a relief to her mind to see his indifference, and yet it filled her with shame.
When the meal was over, and they all dispersed with their different interests, it was Mary who sought to soften what she considered the disappointment of her boy. She came to him as he stood at the window under the verandah, where the day before Percival had given him his fatal illumination, and put her arm within his, and did her best to draw his secret from his clouded and musing eyes.
“My dear boy, let us give in to Hugh,” said Mary; “he is only a guest now, you know, and you are at home.” She was smiling when she said this, and yet it made her sigh. “And then I think he is getting fond of Nelly, and you are far too young for anything of that sort,” Mrs. Ochterlony said, with anxiety and a little doubt, looking him in the face all the time.
“There are some things I am not too young for,” said Will. “Mamma, if I were Hugh I would be at home nowhere unless you were at home there as well.”