It was not, however, at all like a conquering hero that Winton made his appearance at Billings. A number of other people arrived by the same train, and were conveyed in various carriages both before and after him to the great house. It was a long drive, and he had time to think about it and to go over the approaching meeting, rehearsing it again and again. Winton knew as well as any one what it is to arrive at a country house,—the confusion of the arrival, the little pause when no one knows what to do, the hesitation of the people who have never been there before, the well-bred attempts of the people who have, not to seem too much at home, the anxiety of the hosts to distribute their attentions equally and leave no one out—were all familiar to him. But somehow his special position now gave him much of the feeling of surprise and disappointment and involuntary half-offence which a new-comer, unused to society, and expecting perhaps to be received with all the warm individual welcome of more intimate hospitality, feels when he finds himself only one of the least considerable of a large party. All the other members of the group were of greater consequence than Winton, and almost all were habitués of the place, accustomed to come year after year—persons whom the Duke could receive as sufficiently near his own level to be worthy the honour of his friendship. Such a party is always diversified by some one or two people who are altogether nobodies, and afford either a sort of background like supernumeraries in a play, or are elevated to the most important position by dint of dexterity and adulation. Winton felt himself to belong to the background as he stood about in the hall when all the greetings were going on, waiting for his. It had been like a sudden downfall from heaven to earth to perceive, as he cast his first rapid glance round on entering, that Jane was not there. Afterwards he said to himself that he could not have endured her to be there, but for the moment her absence struck him like a blow. And what could the Duchess do more than shake hands with him as she did with all her other guests? He thought she gave him a glance of warning, a little smile—but no doubt every man there supposed that for himself individually her Grace had a kind regard. He stood talking for a short time after the ladies had been swept away to their rooms. He knew several of the more important of the guests, and he knew one of the nobodies who was a very prominent figure. But it was with an indignant sense that his reception ought to have been a very different one that he found himself following a servant up the grand staircase into those distant regions allotted to bachelors, where his non-importance was to be still more forcibly brought home to him. He who ought to have been received as the son of the house—he to whom its brightest member had linked her fate—that he should come in on the same footing as Mr Rosencrantz the German librarian, or that stale hanger-on of the clubs who made a sort of trade of country houses, was very bitter to Winton. He was not accustomed to be a super, and he did not like the post. To tell the truth, in the first half-hour in Billings Castle Winton felt his own hopes and dreams come back upon him with a bitterness and sense of ridicule which drove him almost out of himself. Had he not been a fool to entertain any hopes at all? Was not Lady Germaine ludicrously mistaken when she talked of the Duchess’s pledge? The Duchess, was she not far too great a lady to care what happened to a simple gentleman? He began to think he had been a fool to come, a fool ever to permit himself to shipwreck his heart and life in this way, and doubly a fool, a ridiculous idiot, to go drivelling into decorations and pieces of furniture, as if his little manor-house could ever vie with—All these thoughts were put to flight in a moment by the sudden opening of a closed door which flooded a dark passage to his right with the glory of the sunset sweeping through it. Some one came out and stood for a moment in the midst of that glory: then Winton heard himself called. The servant disappeared by magic, and he suddenly found himself in a small sitting-room with a broad window flooded by the evening light. The Duchess held out both her hands to him, but he scarcely saw them, for behind her, coming in through another door, a little flush upon her soft cheeks, and that liquid golden illumination in her eyes—— it was as if some one had said to him out of the glowing west, “O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?”
This meeting, however, was of the briefest—for the house was very full and the dinner-hour approaching. “You must go away directly,” the Duchess said; “but I could not trust you to meet for the first time down-stairs before so many eyes.”
“So it was policy?” Winton cried.
“Entirely policy—is not every step I take more or less of that description?—but Jane could not have borne it,” she said, “and neither could you, I think. I did not bring you here to ruin you. We must all be on our p’s and q’s.”
“P’s and q’s!” cried Winton, “become insupportable. Dear Duchess, you will not be too hard upon me. Now at least I must have it out, and know my fate. How can I bear to hang on—to have everything pushed off in indefinite space?”
Lady Jane touched his arm lightly with her hand, stroking it, with a pretty movement of mingled soothing and sympathy. “Pazienza!” she said softly; but she liked the impatience. It pleased her delicate sense of what was best.
“Would you prefer, Mr Winton, to know the worst?—would you rather have a definite No than an indefinite suspense?”
“Don’t call him Mr Winton,” said Lady Jane in her under tone.
Winton looked from one lady to another keenly, with an inquiry which the Duchess met without flinching, and Lady Jane without being at all aware what it meant. Her Grace gave him an almost imperceptible nod, always looking him full in the face. Her eyes seemed to promise everything. “In that case,” he said—“in that case—better the refusal: then we shall see what there remains to do.”
The Duchess sighed. “I believe it is the wisest way,” she said, “after all: but you cannot suppose it is very pleasant to me. Now, go; you must go, and leave us to dress. You may come here to-morrow after breakfast, or when we come in, in the afternoon—but you must not be always coming. And in the meantime prudence, prudence! you cannot be too prudent. If you betray yourself I cannot answer for the consequences. You must remember that for Jane’s sake.”