“Mrs. Clare is only half a foreigner. It is a fact I had forgotten. Yes, that certainly makes a difference, and I at once admit that I am a little curious to meet her. Being the sort of woman you have described to me—still, for all her forty years, or whatever their number may be, so splendidly handsome—you have not, I presume, overlooked the possibility of her one day marrying again.”
The Baronet threw a startled glance at his cousin. “No,” he exclaimed, “such an idea never entered my mind.”
“I can well believe it,” rejoined Lady Pell with a little pitying smile. “You men!—you men! But now that I have made you a present of the idea, you cannot fail to perceive the extreme feasibility of it.”
“Um-um. But if Mrs. Clare had any thought or intention of marrying again, why need she have waited all these years? Like the rest of us, Louisa, she is not growing younger.”
“Possibly she has met no one whom she cared to marry. But, be that as it may, it must at once strike you that the Mrs. Clare of to-day—the daughter-in-law of Sir Gilbert Clare and the mother of the prospective heir of Withington Chase—is a very different personage in the matrimonial market from the Mrs. Clare of six months ago. If she prove anything like the kind of woman I take her to be, you may rely upon it that she will not long be content to remain buried in a little poky neighbourhood such as this. She will want—and very naturally—to see something of the world, and to assume that position in society to which by your own act she has become entitled.” Then, perceiving that her words had had more effect than she had intended, she hastened to add: “But these are merely some of my views, and must not be taken for more than they are worth. It may be that I shall find Mrs. Clare a very different kind of person from anything I have imagined her to be.”
Sir Gilbert rose stiffly from his chair.
“What you have just told me, Louisa, has put me about a little, and I have no wish to deny it. There is reason in what you say—much reason. For, when all is said, why should not Alec’s widow marry again if her inclination tends that way? Only, I hadn’t thought of it—that’s where it is—I hadn’t thought of it.”
A happy accident—if that may be termed an accident which was the result of the working out of a series of events altogether outside their own control—had brought Lisle and Ethel together again, but neither of them felt inclined to cavil at having been thus unceremoniously treated. Neither did they evince any disposition to grumble when they found that a day seldom passed without bringing them for a longer or shorter time into the society of each other. Everard was at the Chase nearly every forenoon, and frequently stayed for luncheon, while his invitations to dinner were even more frequent since Lady Pell’s arrival than they had been before. The latter fact he owed to his ability as a whist-player, for Sir Gilbert, to his great satisfaction, now found that, with Mrs. Tew to make a fourth, he could count upon a rubber as often as he chose to bring the little party together, which, on an average, was three or four evenings a week. It was a pleasure from which circumstances had long debarred him.
Everard’s love for Ethel, which her refusal of him had compelled him to crush down with all the force of his will, but which nothing had availed to kill, under the daily sunshine of her presence sprang up into fresh and vigorous life. To all outward seeming, as he flattered himself, his treatment of her in no wise differed from that which he would have accorded to any other young woman with whom circumstances might have brought him into daily contact; but on that point, as we have seen, he was mistaken, Lady Pell having penetrated his secret almost from the first. He strove to so train both his voice and his eyes that neither of them should betray him, and believed—foolish fellow!—that he had succeeded in the attempt. He had no present intention of risking his fate a second time. Just now it was happiness enough to be enabled to see Ethel and to talk with her day after day, to sit by her at table, to hover round her at the piano, and to be permitted to hold her fingers for a moment within his when the time came for bidding her goodnight. Once again his tongue should bear witness for him—and he would stand or fall by the result: but not yet.
And Ethel—what of her?