"Quarrel! for the sake of Mr Torrance! That is carrying clanship a great way."
"There is no clanship in it. You ought to know better, my dear. Your English fallacies are quite out of place here. If I had a clan (which I have not—we are purely Norman, not Celtic at all), Pat Torrance could have had as little to do with it as John Smith."
"My dear Robert," said Lady Lindores, for she had not learned to address her husband by his title, "you take it very seriously. I meant your kindness for your own people. But for a kind prejudice, which I admire and respect, for your old neighbours, you never would put up with a being like this Tinto, as they call him,—a rich fox-hunter, with the mind of a ploughman."
"You will oblige me, Mary," said her husband, coldly, "by restraining your opinion—at all events until you have a better right to express it. What do you know of Pat Torrance? I should very much prefer that you did not commit yourself on the subject. You might regret it after."
"Commit myself!—regret it!" Lady Lindores gazed at her husband with consternation. She had absolutely no guide to what he could mean; but as he stood to his point and would not yield, and as one must certainly yield when such a question arises, she found herself unwillingly obliged to give in. She was behind her children in comprehension, strange as it seems to say so. Lady Lindores had not been unfavourable to Beaufort's claims when first he made his suit to Carry; but she had been perhaps a little disappointed in him as the years passed on. He had not shown the energy, the determination, which a man in such circumstances ought to show. He had made no passionate effort to obtain his bride, such as Carry's mother felt her child was worth. And it was a long time now since Lady Lindores had taken any notice of the lingering engagement which her husband had never positively sanctioned, but which had lingered on for a year or two, coming to nothing. She had thought it best not to interfere. Perhaps Mr Beaufort might think it his duty to release Carry, now that her position was so much changed. The mother did not feel that she could ask him to do so; but if anything had happened to the tardy lover—had he been ill, or died, or proved fickle, she would have felt that Providence was interfering on their behalf. In the meantime, she thought it the best policy to say nothing about it. And it was this reticence which she intended for wisdom, which prevented any explanation between them, and kept her ignorant of what even Edith knew. It did not occur to her to connect her child, so delicate and refined, with the rough and coarse squire, whom she could not tolerate. How her husband could put up with him Lady Lindores could not conceive. He certainly meant something by it, she thought; but what did he mean? Was it some scheme of tactics in respect to the next election? which already, she knew, gave Lord Lindores great concern. Perhaps the Earl, who had a devouring ambition, now that he found an opening for it, thought it well to have the richest man in the county under his influence. This was all that she had yet divined. "Your father insists upon having that Mr Torrance," she said to the girls. "What he can see in him, I cannot imagine. But that does not look at us. We are not called upon to make martyrs of ourselves for papa's political friends."
Carry looked up eagerly as her mother spoke. "Political!" she said, with a quiver of hopeful eagerness in her voice. "Is that the reason?" This eager tone and broken question would have made Lady Lindores wonder had she not been full of the subject from her own point of view.
"What else?" she said. "You cannot suppose a man like your father can find anything else in Mr Torrance to attract him. Politics are very entrancing, but, like necessity, they bring you acquainted with strange bedfellows. Papa thinks, no doubt, that he ought to turn his influence to account."
"Oh, if that is the reason!" said Carry, clasping her hands together, with something like an ecstasy of prayer and thankfulness in her face. Lady Lindores, though she thought the emotion excessive—but then Carry was always visionary—understood that her daughter's delicate soul had been wounded by her father's regard for so unattractive a person. She patted her child upon the cheek tenderly.
"You must not consider yourself responsible for all the things we do in the prosecution of our several parts," she said. "I feel, for my own part, that I take a great deal too much notice of old Gardener. I am getting much too fond of him. This is more innocent, I allow, than your father's fancy for Mr Torrance; for I don't insist on asking old Gardener to dinner."
"That I never should object to!" cried Carry, kissing her mother with sudden enthusiasm. She was cheered beyond measure by the comparison, and by Lady Lindores's absolute ignorance of any other pretension on the part of Torrance. Perhaps she had been deceiving herself, and attributing to her father intentions that had never entered his mind. Carry was too thankful to think that this might be how it was. But Edith, the clear-sighted, avoided her sister's eye. She made no comment on what her mother said. Edith felt that, however others might be deceived, she knew.