I was beginning to feel hungry, and acknowledged that I was. As she went down, she explained that her father had of late taken to invalid habits, and did not join them at table. We found only Mrs Tipper in the dining-room; a large, lofty room, furnished with the same heavy grandeur of style which had struck me in the other parts of the house. But a change had come over Mrs Tipper since I had left her. Her genial good-nature was veiled by the same stiffness and constraint which had jarred upon me at first, as she politely trusted I should find something I could eat, regretted not having known that I should arrive early, so that she might have given orders accordingly; and so forth.
'The Haddons of Haddon!' I thought. She had seen her brother, and been awed by them. But I really could not allow them to come between this dear old lady and me, and therefore replied, I had been accustomed to live so plainly that this was quite a banquet to me; as indeed it was. I saw that I lost ground a little with the man-servant in attendance by my candour; but I could afford to wait for his better appreciation. Mrs Tipper hesitated a moment, when she reached the head of the table, and signified by a gesture her wish for me to take my seat there; in fact, I know now, as I guessed then, that she was only too glad to slip out of taking any prominent position in the household. But I very decidedly shook my head, and passed down, replying to her little protest, that it was not to be thought of—it would not be right. I saw that she understood me to mean that it would not be etiquette, and sat down contented. Could the dear little lady have known it, my ignorance of the ways of the fashionable world was greater than her own. To my amusement, Mrs Tipper's superiors in such knowledge have succumbed to the magic words, 'It would not be right,' with which, knowing no other code, I have occasionally ventured to settle a question. With certain people, 'It is not right,' solely means 'It is not etiquette,' than to sin against which there is no greater wrong; and they have yielded, because they have supposed me better acquainted with the newest mode, rather than imagine that I could have the audacity to attempt innovations of my own.
I soon succeeded in making matters pleasant with Mrs Tipper again. In five minutes the Haddons of Haddon were forgotten, and we were getting through luncheon in friendly agreeable fashion. There was a slight obtuseness on Richard's side when I required anything; but he found that his forgetfulness did not in the slightest degree disturb me, nor prevent my obtaining what I wanted. I quietly waited; and as he could not let me repeat a request more than once without drawing the attention of the others to his negligence, he came at length to understand that it was just as well to do a thing at once as to be quietly forced to do it. The attention of both Lilian and her aunt was too much concentrated upon me for them to notice the man's remissness, and I did my best to prevent them seeing it. I knew that Lilian's eyes were turned upon me more than once when I was supposed to be unobservant, and thought of her words, 'Companion means so much,' with all the more respect for her judgment, whatever it might prove to be.
That we two should be friends, I knew. I should love her, and I believed that she might come to love me. But would ours be as the companionship of two of the same age? Should I ever be able to lay bare my inmost self, living so intensely and so differently to the Mary Haddon most people knew, to this young girl? She had spoken of her love to me; should I be able to speak of mine to her—the love which was deeper and stronger than a girl's love? It was with something akin to pain that I told myself no. Because it was not the love of a girl; because it was in its heights higher and in its depths deeper; because it was in its strength and weakness so much more human at eight-and-twenty than at seventeen, I could not talk about it to Lilian Farrar. The shadowy poetic sentiment which clings about a young girl's dream, the love which is more in love with love than with the lover, was not mine. I am an old woman now, writing a story for men and women, and therefore I will add that I have still quite as much romance and enthusiasm in my composition as I had at seventeen, which is an admission to make in these days; but at eight-and-twenty I persuaded myself that they were or ought to be dead. In truth, my eight-and-twenty years were pressing upon me rather too heavily for mental health. I could not take kindly to the idea that youth was gone, or recognise that the best of me was not necessarily gone with it. But there is no need for me to analyse and dwell upon my weaknesses here; they will be apparent enough as I go on, and will doubtless preach their own moral without my assistance.
After luncheon, we returned to the pretty morning-room where I had first seen Mrs Tipper, and devoted the afternoon to making better acquaintance with each other. I began by telling my own little story (so far as it could be told, with Philip left out) about my dear mother's long illness, the struggles I had had to obtain a living when alone, and so forth, because I wished to appear in my true colours to these two, and above all, wished to get rid of the Haddons-of-Haddon tone in our future intercourse. Then dear old Mrs Tipper came out grandly with her little story respecting past ups and downs; not even omitting the fact that her deceased husband had been messenger (between ourselves, porter, my dear) in the firm where her brother rose to be chief, and how he had been pensioned by 'dear Jacob,' and ended his days in peace and comfort in a cottage of his own at Holloway, all the grandest visions of his youth realised.
Afterwards, Lilian told how her father had risen in life entirely by his own efforts; whilst her colour deepened with an equally right pride as she added that her mother had been a gentlewoman, to whose foresight her child owed the education that was something better than any her father's money alone could have purchased. As Mrs Tipper had informed me, it had been Mrs Farrar's dying wish that the first fifteen years of her child's life should be spent with an old friend and distant connection of her own. She had not erred in her judgment. Notwithstanding her naturally good disposition, Lilian would have suffered from the disadvantages consequent upon being brought up in luxury, the petted heiress of a wealthy man, instead of spending her early years at a country vicarage in wholesome study and exercise. I could understand now how it happened that Mr Farrar's daughter was so refined and different from what might have been expected. I knew now why it gratified her so much to believe that her lover had not sought her for her money's sake. Any one but herself would have thought it natural enough that she should be sought for her own sake. How true, and good, and sweet she was, and how soon one knew it; there being no mysterious complications in her nature which it would take time to discover.
'To think of our having so dreaded the lady-companion, auntie; and to think of my having pleaded so much with papa against engaging one!' ejaculated Lilian, when, after a very pleasant afternoon, we rose to go to our rooms and dress for dinner.
'We did dread her, did we not, dear?' smilingly returned the old lady, putting her hand upon mine; 'though I had the most cause for dread.'
'Indeed you had not—your cause is mine,' very decidedly said Lilian.
That they could say so much before me was sufficient, had I not already arrived at the agreeable conclusion that I had found a home until Philip's return.