Whatever might have been stirred up in the inner recesses of a nature whose depths no mortal, save herself, had plumbed, remained concealed. She permitted no line of anxious care to invade the regularity of her smooth brow, nor did she allow her coldly placid bearing, or the existing arrangements governing her daily movements, to undergo any change.
Miss Grahame had left her home. Whither she had gone, wherefore, or in what manner, she considered, from her point of view, to be that young lady’s business alone. She was herself the last person in the world to offer explanations to any one upon domestic occurrences. As well might such a surrender of dignity be expected from imperial majesty. To the inquiries of friends, it would be enough to say that Miss Grahame was absent, and that was the only decided step she determined upon taking in the really terrible event. She would, it is true, have gladly plied her servants with the waters of Lethe, so that the past, which in any way took in Miss Grahame, might be forgotten by them; but she made no allusion to her; and, discharging, at a moment’s notice, Chayter, Helen’s maid, sternly forbade her own attendant, or any other member of the household, to repeat her daughter’s name in her presence.
Margaret Grahame wasted not her powers of imagination in endeavouring to divine why her sister Helen had fled. She rather looked upon the circumstance as one that had rid her of a formidable rival, and she fixed her sluggish, single thought yet more steadfastly upon the young Duke of St. Allborne.
Malcolm, exclusively under the control of his mother, when he heard from her his sister’s flight, at her desire, moved not with a view of tracing the fugitive. He thought her departure “deuced odd,” and wondered what it could all mean; but, beyond an undefined feeling of surprise, mingled with a vague anxiety, he was not more affected than if some attendant pertaining to the household from childhood had mysteriously disappeared.
He had been, from early boyhood, at public schools, and had met his sister only in the vacations, at which periods their intercourse, under the forms of domestic etiquette laid down by Mrs. Grahame for the observance of her children, was not more affectionate in its nature than if they had been ceremonious acquaintances.
It is the common and natural tendency of public education—that is the system which removes a child from home influences—to detach or diminish filial and fraternal love. The young heart, always seeking for something to love, fastens upon objects with which it comes in daily contact. Love of kindred is weakened in the personal attachments formed at school; and as, during the progress to man or womanhood, the opportunities for correcting this evil are rather lessened by the extra studies imposed, the youth of both sexes usually terminate the educational career with a strong impression that parents are exacting; on the boy’s side, the pater having a predominant passion for stinginess; and, on the girl’s, that “ma” has a great many ridiculous notions, and is only another form of the odious grim feminine tyrant, from whose rigorous despotism she has been just emancipated.
Perhaps, therefore, it is not so surprising that Malcolm Grahame went out to dine with some friends in the Guards on the day of his sister’s flight, his equanimity being not much more disturbed than usual.
Evangeline was the only one who appeared to feel acutely, and to see the affair in its true light, but then she was considered to be of weak intellect. It was a common thing for her to violate all “the proprieties.” Her gentle, loving nature, her soft, womanly sympathies, impelled her to do this, and her “puling absurdities,” as her mamma styled the sweet evidences of her affectionate disposition, were allowed to exhibit themselves only on sufferance. On this occasion, however, she displayed such frantic, inconsolable grief, that she was dismissed harshly to her own room, and was ordered to remain there until she could quit it with a face serene and passionless, upon which remained no traces of the suffering her sister’s flight had occasioned her.
Mr. Grahame had not been communicated with. His lady’s first impulse was to telegraph to him to return instantly to London; upon second thoughts, she decided to await his return.
With him she acted as with others—she simply expressed her will when she adopted a course of action. It did not cross her that Mr. Grahame might object to her mode of proceeding in respect to Helen’s disappearance, but if it had, it would not have influenced her. It was enough that she considered the course she had pursued the proper one.