Next afternoon there came a second telegram addressed to Miss Loraine: ‘No news of the governor yet. Most extraordinary. Would have started back to-day, but Blatchett strongly advises to remain till morning. Should there be no news by ten A.M., you may expect me at the Palatine in time for dinner.’
‘Just like Sir William—just like him; I’m not a bit surprised,’ was Mr Etheridge’s curt comment when he had read the telegram.
‘He must indeed be a singular man,’ said Clarice. Then her eyes began to sparkle, and a lovely colour flushed her cheeks. ‘Perhaps by this time to-morrow Archie may be back again,’ she said, more as if speaking to herself than addressing Mr Etheridge.
In the course of these two days Colonel Woodruffe and Mr Etheridge met more than once. They talked together, walking side by side on the lawn of the hotel. The chief part of the talking, however, seemed to be done by the colonel, his companion’s share of it being mostly confined to ‘Yes’ or ‘No,’ a confirmatory nod of the head, or now and then a brief question.
When Lady Renshaw got back from the picnic on Wednesday evening, and was in a position to have a quiet chat with her niece, she declared that she had not spent so pleasant a day for a long time. Dr M‘Murdo was really a most agreeable, well-informed man—a man whose talents ought to make him a position in the world; and as for the poor, dear vicar, he was nothing less than charming. ‘So simple-minded and unworldly, my dear. He quite puts me in mind of the Vicar of Wakefield.’ Then she added by way of after-thought: ‘But I cannot say that I care greatly for that sister of his. There is something about her excessively flippant and satirical—and I do dislike satirical people, above all others.’
But Lady Renshaw’s real enjoyment—of which she said nothing to her niece—arose from her thorough belief that both the doctor and the vicar had been irresistibly smitten by her charms. If they were not in love, or close on the verge of it, why had they followed her about all day like two spaniels, each of them jealously afraid to leave her alone with the other? It was delightful! As she sipped a cup of tea after her return, she began to ask herself whether she might not do worse than accept this clever, well-preserved Scotch doctor. She had no doubt in her own mind that he would propose in the course of a few days. With the help of her money, he might buy a first-class West-end practice; and after that, there was no knowing what he might not rise to in the course of a few years. Seven to ten thousand a year, so she had been given to understand, was by no means an uncommon income for a fashionable doctor to make nowadays. She would think the matter over in the quietude of her own room, so that she might be prepared with her answer, when the inevitable moment should arrive.
The fact was that Dr Mac had fooled her to the top of her bent, as Miss Gaisford had prophesied he would do. Her vanity, as he soon found, was insatiable; no compliment was too egregious for her to swallow. ‘I’ve done my duty like a man,’ he remarked with grim humour to Miss Pen at the close of the day; ‘but I hope you will never set me such a task again: the creature’s self-conceit is stupendous—stupendous!’
The picnic took place on Wednesday. Thursday was ushered in with wind and rain. The hills had wrapped thick mantles of mist about them, and had retired into private life. Visitors shook their heads as they peered out of the rain-streaked windows, and made up their minds to settle down for the day to novels, gossip, and letter-writing. Despite the wind and rain, Dr Mac set out for Kendal at an early hour with the avowed intention of hunting up some old friends. The vicar, too timid to tackle the widow by himself, kept to his own room, on the plea of having a sermon to compose. Miss Wynter might have been justified that day in her belief that her aunt’s temper was not invariably the most angelic in the world.
Bella had enjoyed her picnic more, far more than her aunt was aware of. And yet the girl was troubled in her secret heart. Dick had never made love to her so audaciously before; in fact, the opportunity had never been afforded him; while she herself had never quite known till that day how dear he had become to her. Her training, almost from childhood, and her mode of life since her aunt had taken charge of her, had all tended to stifle the feelings natural to her age and sex, and to induce her to regard the sacrament of marriage as a mere question of pounds, shillings, and pence. Yet here, almost to her dismay, and very much to her mortification, because she felt that she could not help it, she found herself hopelessly in love with a man the amount of whose income seemed in her eyes little more than an equivalent for semi-genteel pauperism. What was to be done? Should she treat Dick after the fashion in which she had treated more than one man already? Now that she had brought him to her feet, should she turn her back on him with a little smile of triumph, and bid him farewell for ever? But then, she had never cared for those other men; while for Dick she did care very much. Whatever she might decide to do must be decided quickly. Dick, easy-going and full of fun as he might seem to be, was not a man to stand any shilly-shallying nonsense. As he stood for a moment or two on the dusky lawn with her hand in his after their return from the picnic, he had given her plainly to understand that he should expect a categorical ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ from her on Friday. And now Friday was here, and her mind was no nearer being made up than it had been on Wednesday. Not much appetite for her breakfast had Miss Wynter that morning.