"You don't understand it?" said Miss Marjoribanks; "I don't think it was to be expected that you should understand it. A little thing like you has no way of knowing the world. When Barbara knows I am there, she will be sure to bring him to the very door; she will want me to see that he is with her; and you may leave the rest to me," said Lucilla. "For my part, I have something very particular to say to Mr Cavendish. It is my luck," Miss Marjoribanks added, "for I could not think how to get to see him. At eight o'clock to-morrow evening——"
"Yes," said Rose; but perhaps it was still doubtful how far she understood the mode of operations proposed. Lucilla's prompt and facile genius was too much for the young artist, and there was, as she herself would have said, an entire want of "keeping" between her own sense of the position, tragical and desperate as that was, and any state of matters which could be ameliorated by the fact of Miss Marjoribanks coming to tea. It had been Rose's only hope, and now it seemed all at once to fail her; and yet, at the same time, that instinctive faith in Lucilla which came naturally to every one under her influence struggled against reason in Rose's heart. Her red soft lips fell apart with the hurried breath of wonder and doubt; her eyes still expanded, and clearer than usual after their tears, were fixed upon Lucilla with an appealing, questioning look; and it was just at this moment, when Rose was a great deal too much absorbed in her disappointment and surprise, and lingering hope, to take any notice of strange sounds or sights, or of anybody coming, that Thomas all at once opened the door and showed Mrs Centum into the room.
Now it would have mattered very little for Mrs Centum—who, to be sure, knew Lucilla perfectly well, and would never have dreamed for a moment of identifying such a trifling little person as Rose Lake in any way with Miss Marjoribanks; but then Mrs Centum happened at that precise moment to be bringing the new arrival, the important stranger, who had so much in his power—General Travers himself—to be introduced to Lucilla; and it was not the fault either of Rose or the General if it was on the young mistress of the Female School of Design that the warrior's first glance fell. Naturally the conversation had run upon Miss Marjoribanks on the past evening, for Mrs Centum was full of the enthusiasm and excitement incident to that paté which Lucilla had so magnanimously enabled her to produce. "Is she pretty?" General Travers had demanded, as was to be expected. "We—ll," Mrs Centum had replied, and made a long pause—"would you call Lucilla pretty, Charles?" and Charles had been equally dubious in his response; for, to be sure, it was a dereliction from Miss Marjoribanks's dignity to call her pretty, which is a trifling sort of qualification. But when the General entered the drawing-room, which might be called the centre of Carlingford, and saw before him that little dewy face, full of clouds and sunshine, uncertain, unquiet, open-eyed, with the red lips apart, and the eyes clear and expanded with recent tears—a face which gave a certain sentiment of freshness and fragrance to the atmosphere like the quiet after a storm—he did not understand what his hosts could mean. "I call her very pretty," he said, under his breath, to his interested and delighted chaperone; and we are surely justified in appealing to the readers of this history, as Lucilla, who was always reasonable, afterwards did to herself, whether it could be justly said under all the circumstances, that either Rose or the General were to blame?
The little artist got up hurriedly when she awoke to the fact that other visitors had come into the room, but she was not at all interested in General Travers, whom Rose, with the unconscious insolence of youth, classified in her own mind as an elderly gentleman. Not that he was at all an elderly gentleman; but then a man of forty, especially when he is a fine man and adequately developed for his years, has at the first glance no great attraction for an impertinent of seventeen. Rose did not go away without receiving another kiss from Lucilla, and a parting reminder. "To-morrow at eight o'clock; and mind you leave it all to me, and don't worry," said Miss Marjoribanks; and Rose, half ashamed, put on her hat and went away, without so much as remarking the admiration in the stranger's eyes, nor the look of disappointment with which he saw her leave the room. Rose thought no more of him than if he had been a piece of furniture; but as for the General, when he found himself obliged to turn to Lucilla and make himself agreeable, the drawback of having thus had his admiration forestalled and drawn away from its legitimate object was such, that he did not find her at all pretty; which, after all, on a first interview at least, is all They think about, as Miss Marjoribanks herself said.
"We must do all we can to make Carlingford agreeable to the General," said Mrs Centum. "You know how much depends upon it, Lucilla. If we can but make him like the place, only think what an advantage to society—and we have such nice society in Carlingford," said the injudicious woman, who did not know what to say.
"Nothing very particular," said Miss Marjoribanks. "I hope General Travers will like us; but as for the officers, I am not so sure. They are all so light and airy, you know: and to have nothing but flirting men is almost as bad as having nobody that can flirt; which is my position," Lucilla added, with a sigh, "as long as Mr Cavendish is away."
"Lucilla," cried Mrs Centum, a little shocked, "one would think to hear you that you were the greatest coquette possible; and on the contrary she is quite an example to all our young ladies, I assure you, General; and as for flirting——"
"Dear Mrs Centum," said Lucilla sweetly, "one has always to do one's duty to society. As far as I am concerned, it is quite different. And I don't mean to say that the officers would not be a great acquisition," Miss Marjoribanks continued, with her usual politeness; "but then too many young people are the ruin of society. If we were to run all to dancing and that sort of thing, after all the trouble one has taken——" said Lucilla. Perhaps it was not quite civil; but then it must be admitted, that to see a man look blankly in your face as if he were saying in his mind, "Then it is only you, and not that pretty little thing, that is Miss Marjoribanks!" was about as exasperating a sensation as one is likely to meet with. Lucilla understood perfectly well General Travers's look, and for the moment, instead of making herself agreeable, it was the contrary impulse that moved her. She looked at him, not blankly as he looked at her, but in a calmly considerate way, as she might have looked at Mr Holden the upholsterer, had he proposed a new kind of tapisserie to her judgment. "One would be always delighted, of course, to have General Travers," said Miss Marjoribanks, "but I am afraid the officers would not do."
As for Mrs Centum, she was quite incapable of managing such a terrible crisis. She felt it, indeed, a little hard that it should be her man who was defied in this alarming way, while Mr Cavendish and the Archdeacon, the two previous candidates, had both been received so sweetly. To be sure, it was his own fault; but that did not mend matters. She looked from one to the other with a scared look, and grew very red, and untied her bonnet; and then, as none of these evidences of agitation had any effect upon the other parties involved, plunged into the heat of the conflict without considering what she was about to say.
"Lucilla, I am surprised at you," said Mrs Centum, "when you know how you have gone on about Mr Cavendish—when you know what a fuss you have made, and how you have told everybody——"