“What can I do? Lucy would be wretched without him; he is the only tie she has, the only duty. What am I to do?”
Mrs. Berry-Montagu shook her head softly, and smiled once more—smiled with the utmost significance. “You must, indeed, see your way very clearly,” she said, with that gentle languor which sat so well upon her, “when you burden yourself with the boy.”
“I don’t know what you mean by seeing my way,” Lady Randolph said, with some heat. An uncomfortable flush came upon her face, and something like consciousness to her manner. “I had no alternative. Taking Lucy, I was almost bound to take her brother too, when I found out her devotion to him.”
“Ah, you’re too good, too good, my dear; you don’t think half enough of your own interests,” said Lady Betsinda. “If the girl had come to me I’ll tell you what I should have done. I’d have been kind to her, but not too kind. I’d have let her see clearly that little brothers are sent to school. I’d have given her to understand that I was doing her a great favor in having her at all. She should not have wanted for anything. I don’t advise you or anybody to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, but to make her the chief interest, and everything to give way to her, that’s what I would never do.”
“I am afraid I shall have to take my own way, so far as that goes,” said Lady Randolph, roused to a little offense.
“Yes, dear, of course you will take your own way, we all do,” said Mrs Berry-Montagu, giving her friend a kiss before she went away, “and I don’t doubt it will all come right in the end.”
The two visitors went out together, and they stopped to talk for a moment before they parted at the door of the little stuffy brougham which carried Lady Betsinda from one place to another.
“I suppose she has something in her head,” said the old lady. And, “Oh, who can doubt it?” said the other; “Sir Tom!”
Was it true? Lady Randolph was very angry and impatient as she turned from the door, after the kiss which she had bestowed on each. Women have to kiss, as men shake hands, it is the established formula of parting among friends, not to be omitted, which would imply a breach, because of a little momentary flash of irritation. But the cause of her anger was not so much what they had said to her as that word of mutual confidence which she knew would pass between them at the door: was it true? If it had not been so Lady Randolph would not have divined it. She paced up and down her pretty drawing-room, giving one glance from the window to see, as she expected, the one lady standing at the door of the little carriage, while the wrinkled countenance of the other bent out from within. She saw Lady Betsinda give a great many nods of intelligence, and her heart burned within her with momentary fury. Often it happens that the worst of the pang of being found out is the revelation it makes to one’s self. Lady Randolph meant no harm; not to introduce her nephew to Lucy would have been, in the circumstances, a thing impossible; and who could expect her to be responsible for anything that might follow? When an unmarried man meets a nice girl there is never any telling what may happen. And Lucy was certainly a nice girl, notwithstanding her ignorance and simplicity and her great fortune. To be sure, any connection of this kind would be a mésalliance for Tom; but even these were common incidents, and took place in the very highest circles. If this was fortune-hunting, then fortune-hunting was simple nature, and no more. After awhile the irritation died away. She sat down again and took up the book she had been reading when that committee of direction came in and began their sitting upon her and her concerns. Lady Randolph was about sixty, a large and ample woman with no pretense at juvenility; but her eye was not dim or her natural force abated. There was only a small proportion of gray—just enough to give it an air of honest reality—in her abundant hair. As she sat and read a sentence or two, then paused and mused a little with the book closed over her hand, she recovered her composure. “What good will it do me?” she asked herself triumphantly. Had she been seeking her own advantage her conduct might have been subject to blame; but she was not seeking her own advantage. Should any marriage come to pass it would deprive her, at one stroke, of all the comfort which Lucy’s allowance brought her. She would be giving up, not gaining anything. When this thought passed through her mind it seemed a full answer to all possible objections, and she resumed her reading with the feeling that she had put every caviller to silence, and nobly justified herself to herself. “What advantage would it be to me?” the words twined themselves among those of the book she was reading, and appeared on every page more visible than the print. “What good would it do to me? I should suffer by it,” she said.
While Lady Randolph was thus employed down stairs Lucy and Jock were seated together at the window of the pretty little sitting-room, which had been so carefully prepared for the girl’s comfort and pleasure. It was high up, but it had a pretty view over the gardens of the neighboring square, where soon the trees would begin to bud and blossom, and where even now the birds began to hold colloquies and prelude, with little interrogative pipings and chirpings, till it should be time for better music, while in front, though at some distance down, was the cheerful London street, in which there was always variety to eyes accustomed to the Terrace at Farafield. They had not tired yet of its sights and sounds, or found it noisy, as Lady Randolph sometimes did. The house was situated in one of the streets heading out of Grosvenor Square, and all sorts of things went past, wheelbarrows full of flowers, flowers in such quantities as they had never seen in the country, tradespeople’s carts of every description, German bands, all kinds of amusing things.