He was one of those men who consider it beneath their dignity to betray tender emotion, and who perhaps look sternest and most forbidding when they are feeling unusually soft and gentle. At any rate, he would not explain to his aunt that he believed the marriage to be an eminently fair bargain—an old-fashioned exchange—love for love—as much love on the girl’s side as on his.
Lady Jane made no promise, but she proved very kind indeed to her new niece; endeavouring to find innocent amusement for pretty Cynthia, acting as her chaperon, watching over her, and growing fonder and fonder of her. She said that the young Lady Beckford was a model wife and a pattern stepmother. No one could have been more devoted to or wiser in her training of Master Jack.
Now, after five years, the boy was ready to go to a public school, and during these long summer days a holiday tutor had been giving him final preparation, ultimate crammed knowledge, and topmost polish of tone and manners. August had been spent at the Beckfords’ country house in Devonshire, and the early weeks of September at their flat in Victoria Street. Lady Jane approved of everything that concerned these arrangements, except one thing. She approved of the public school, of the engaging of a holiday tutor, of all the care, devotion, and forethought with which the little man was being launched from the home circle; but she did not approve of the fact that Sir John had thrown the whole burden on Cynthia’s slender shoulders, while he did his stupid salmon-fishing four hundred miles away in Scotland.
Not quite fair to Cynthia—leaving her all alone with a schoolboy and his tutor. Lady Jane, at considerable inconvenience, ran down to Devonshire to cheer and enliven her. Came back to London and at worse inconvenience stayed there, so as to be handy to act as companion, chaperon, advisory ally, whenever Cynthia wanted her.
But Cynthia wanted her scarcely at all, and allowed poor Lady Jane to perceive at last that uninvited companions are sometimes a tedium rather than a solace.
It was the last night of the holidays. To-morrow Master Jack and his tutor would disappear from Victoria Street.
Dinner had been ordered at an early hour, and Jack was scampering through his meal with excited swiftness. One last treat had been arranged for him. He was to be dispatched to a theatre presently in charge of George, the footman.
“I wish you were coming,” said Jack, and as he turned to Mr. Ridsdale his eyes expressed eloquently enough the hero-worship that is so easy to kindle in young and ingenuous hearts.
“It would be scarcely polite,” said Mr. Ridsdale, “for both of us to desert Lady Beckford.”