“There was no one there so pretty,” said innocent Reine.
“Pretty! she is not pretty: she is splendid! she is beautiful! By Jove! to see her with her arm raised, and that child on her shoulder—it’s like a picture! If you will laugh,” said Herbert pettishly, “don’t laugh in that offensive way! What have they done to you, and why are you so disagreeable to-night?”
“Am I disagreeable?” said Everard laughing again. It was all he could do to keep from being angry, and he felt this was the safest way. “Perhaps it is that I am more enlightened than you youngsters. However beautiful a woman may be (and I don’t deny she’s very handsome), I can see when she’s playing a part.”
“What part is she playing?” cried Herbert hotly. Reine was half frightened by his vehemence, and provoked as he was by Everard’s disdainful tone; but she pressed her brother’s arm to restrain him, fearful of a quarrel, as girls are so apt to be.
“I suppose you will say we are all playing our parts; and so we are,” said Reine. “Bertie, you have been the hero to-night, and we are all your satellites for the moment. Come in quick, it feels chilly. I don’t suppose even Everard would say Sophy was playing a part, except her natural one,” she added with a laugh.
Everard was taken by surprise. He echoed her laugh with all the imbecility of astonishment. “You believe in them too,” he said to her in an aside, then added, “No, only her natural part,” with a tone which Herbert found as offensive as the other. Herbert himself was in a state of flattered self-consciousness which made him look upon every word said against his worshippers as an assault upon himself. Perhaps the lad being younger than his years, was still at the age when a boy is more in love with himself than any one else, and loves others according to their appreciation of that self which bulks so largely in his own eyes. Giovanna’s homage to him, and Sophy’s enthusiasm of cousinship, and the flattering look in all these fine eyes, had intoxicated Herbert. He could not but feel that they were above all criticism, these young, fair women, who did such justice to his own excellences. As for any suggestion that their regard for him was not genuine, it was as great an insult to him as to them, and brought him down, in the most humbling way, from the pedestal on which they had elevated him. Reine’s hand patting softly on his arm kept him silent, but he felt that he could knock down Everard with pleasure, and fumes of anger and self-exaltation mounted into his head.
“Don’t quarrel, Bertie,” Reine whispered in his ear.
“Quarrel! he is not worth quarrelling with. He is jealous, I suppose, because I am more important than he is,” Herbert said, stalking through the long passages which were still all bright with lights and flowers. Everard, hanging back out of hearing, followed the two young figures with his eyes through the windings of the passage. Herbert held his head high, indignant. Reine, with both her hands on his arm, soothed and calmed him. They were both resentful of his sour tone and what he had said.
“I dare say they think I am jealous,” Everard said to himself with a laugh that was not merry, and went away to his own room, and beginning to arrange his things for departure, meaning to leave next day. He had no need to stay there to swell Herbert’s triumph, he who had so long acted as nurse to him without fee or reward. Not quite without reward either, he thought, after all, rebuking himself, and held up his hand and looked at it intently, with a smile stealing over his face. Why should he interfere to save Herbert from his own vanity and folly? Why should he subject himself to the usual fate of Mentors, pointing out Scylla on the one side and Charybdis on the other? If the frail vessel was determined to be wrecked, what had he, Everard, to do with it? Let the boy accomplish his destiny, who cared? and then what could Reine do but take refuge with her natural champion, he whom she herself had appointed to stand in her place, and who had his own score against her still unacquitted? It was evidently to his interest to keep out of the way, to let things go as they would. “And I’ll back Giovanna against Sophy,” he said to himself, half jealous, half laughing, as he went to sleep.
As for Herbert, he lounged into the great hall, where some lights were still burning, with his sister, and found Miss Susan there, pale with fatigue and the excitement past but triumphant. “I hope you have not tired yourself out,” she said. “It was like those girls to lead you out into the night air, to give you a chance of taking cold. Their father would like nothing better than to see you laid up again: but I don’t give them credit for any scheme. They are too feather-brained for anything but folly.”