‘It don’t look so bad, Miss Mary, after all,’ said her maid encouragingly, as she gave the last twitch to the skirt. And certainly it did not look bad. The sensible young woman who wished her cousin Ben to respect her, had a little rose-flush going and coming on her cheeks, and a lucid gleam of emotion in her eyes, which might have justified a more marked sentiment. Her hand was a little tremulous, her voice apt,—if the expression is permissible,—to go into chords, the keys of half-a-dozen different feelings being struck at the same moment, and producing, if a little incoherence, at the same time a curious multiplicity of tone. The dining-room had more lights than usual, but still was not bright; and when Ben came in with his mother on his arm, he protested instantly against the great desert of a table, which, in deference to old custom, was always spread in the long-deserted place.
‘I can’t have you half-a-mile off,’ he said. ‘You must sit by me here, mamma, and you here, Mary. That is better. We are not supposed to be on our best behaviour, I hope, the very day I come home.’
‘Why, this is very nice,’ said Mrs. Renton, as she sipped her soup at her son’s right hand, and stopped from time to time to look at him. ‘And one does not feel as if one had any responsibility. I think I shall keep this seat, my dear; it will be like dining out without any of the trouble. And then, Ben, I shall not feel the change when you bring home a wife.’
Mary, who had been looking on, suddenly turned her eyes away; but all the same, she perceived that Ben’s obstinate Renton upper lip settled down a little, and that he grew stern to behold.
‘I don’t think that is a very likely event,’ he said.
‘But it must be,’ said Mrs. Renton; ‘it must be some time. I don’t say directly, because this is very pleasant. And after being left seven years all alone, I think I might have my boy to myself to cheer me up a little. But it must be some time,—in a year or two,—when you have had time to look about you and make up your mind.’
‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,’ said Ben, with a short laugh; ‘if I am to judge of my effect upon English ladies by the impression I made on Mary,—it is not encouraging, I can tell you. I was afraid she would faint.’
‘Oh, Ben!’ Mary exclaimed, looking up at him with her lucid, emotional eyes; and the rose-flush went over all her face. It was a very pleasant face to look at. And, perhaps, even beauty herself is not more attractive than a countenance which changes when you look at it, and a voice full of chords. Yes; no doubt he had some respect for her, and even esteem, if you went so far as that.
‘Mary and I have been living so much out of the world,’ said Mrs. Renton. ‘We have been quite alone, you know, my dear. My poor health was never equal to the exertion. It is always best for such an invalid as I am to give up everything, I believe. And except just our drives,—your poor dear papa always made such a point of my drives.’
‘But Mary was not an invalid,’ said Ben, and he looked full at her for a moment, lighting up once more the glow in her face. ‘I don’t know what you have been doing to yourself,’ he said. ‘Is it the way she has her hair, mother? It cannot be her dress, because I remember that gown. I suppose she has been asleep all these seven years, like the beauty in the wood.’