"Oh, doesn't she, though!" murmured Rintoul in his moustache. To his own consciousness his mother was the member of his family who stood the most in need of his guidance. He thought her the most imprudent woman he had ever come across, paying no attention to her children's prospects. They went on thus till they came to the gate, where the Countess of Lindores was actually to be seen by the woman at the lodge, or by any passing wayfarer, in her dinner-dress, with nothing but a lace cap on her head—and Edith, in her white robes and shining hair—saying good-bye to this rustic neighbour, this insidious squire! Rintoul could not for some time relieve his soul as he wished. He was compelled to shake hands too, in a surly way; and it was not till Edith had left them that he permitted himself to make, as he said, a few remarks to his mother. She was lingering outside, for it was still daylight though it was night.
"Mother," said Rintoul, solemnly, "I see it's all exactly as I feared. You have let that fellow Erskine get to be a sort of tame cat about the house."
"After?" said his mother, with a smile.
"After! well, that's as you choose. But of this you may be sure, mother, my father won't stand it. It will only make trouble in the house. He won't let Edith throw herself away. You had better put a stop to it while you are able. I suspected it from the first moment I knew that Erskine was here."
"You are very wise, Rintoul," said his mother, with grieved displeasure, all the pain and disenchantment which she had managed to put aside and forget coming back into her troubled eyes.
"I don't know if I'm very wise; but I know something of the world," said the son, who was so much better instructed than she was; "and I know, when one has charge of a girl, one oughtn't to allow her to throw herself away."
"Carry is supposed not to have thrown herself away," said the indignant mother, with a glance towards that centre of her saddest thoughts, the arrogant front and false battlements of Tinto, faintly gleaming like royal Windsor itself in the mists of distance. This was all in contradiction to the changed state of her mind towards Millefleurs and the gradual leaning towards a great marriage for Edith which had come over her. But we are never more hot in defence of our own side than when we have begun to veer towards the other; and Rintoul's lectures had been for a long time more than his mother could endure.
"No, Carry cannot be said to have thrown herself away," he said thoughtfully, stroking that moustache which looked so young, while its owner was so wise and politic. "Carry should remember," he said, after a pause, "that she's an individual, but the family comprises many people—heaps of her descendants will be grateful to her, you know. And if the fellow is unbearable, why, a woman has always got it in her own hands to make his life a burden to him. Why is she so absurdly domestic? They have quantities of money, and there are plenty of brutes in society to keep him in countenance. She ought to come to town and see people, and enjoy herself. What is the good of living like a cabbage here?"
"If you will persuade Carry to emancipate herself a little—to think of herself a little—I will forgive you all your worldly-mindedness," said his mother, with a smile.
"I will try," he said; "and as for my worldly-mindedness, as you call it, how is a fellow to get on in the world, I should like to know? It isn't by money I'll ever push my way. I must look out for other ways and means."