Kitabı oku: «The Clever Woman of the Family», sayfa 29
She went to church in the evening, sheltered from curious eyes in her nook, and there for a moment she heard the peculiar brush and sweep of rich silk upon pavement, and wondered at so sophisticated a sound in the little homely congregation, but forgot it again in the exulting, joyous beauty of the chants and hymns, led by the rector himself, and, oh, how different from poor Mr. Touchett’s best efforts! and forgot it still more in the unfettered eloquence of the preaching of a man of great natural power, and entirely accustomed to trust to his own inward stores. Like Ermine Williams, she could have said that this preaching was the first that won her attention. It certainly was the first that swept away all her spirit of criticising, and left her touched and impressed, not judging. On what north country folk call the loosing of the kirk, she, moving outwards after the throng, found herself close behind a gauzy white cloak over a lilac silk, that filled the whole breadth of the central aisle, and by the dark curl descending beneath the tiny white bonnet, as well as by the turn of the graceful head, she knew her sister-in-law, Lady Keith, of Gowanbrae. In the porch she was met with outstretched hands and eager greetings—
“At last! Where did you hide yourself? I had begun to imagine dire mischances.”
“Only in the corner by the chancel.”
“Alick’s old nook! Keeping up honeymoon privileges! I have kept your secret faithfully. No one knows you are not on the top of Snowdon, or you would have had all the world to call on you.”
“There are always the Earlsworthy woods,” said Alick.
“Or better still, come to Timber End. No one penetrates to my morning room,” laughed Bessie.
“Now, Uncle George,” she said, as the rector appeared, “you have had a full allowance of them for three days, you must spare them to me to-morrow morning.”
“So it is you, my lady,” he answered, with a pleased smile; “I heard a sort of hail-storm of dignity sailing in! How is Lord Keith?”
“Very stiff. I want him to have advice, but he hates doctors. What is the last Avonmouth news? Is Ermine in good heart, and the boys well again?”
She was the same Bessie as ever—full of exulting animation, joined to a caressing manner that her uncle evidently delighted in; and to Rachel she was most kind and sisterly, welcoming her so as amply to please and gratify Alick. An arrangement was made that Rachel should be sent for early to spend the day at Timber End, and that Mr. Clare and Alick should walk over later. Then the two pretty ponies came with her little low carriage to the yew-tree gate, were felt and admired by Mr. Clare, and approved by Alick, and she drove off gaily, leaving all pleased and amused, but still there was a sense that the perfect serenity had been ruffled.
“Rachel,” said Alick, as they wandered in the twilight garden, “I wonder if you would be greatly disappointed if our travels ended here.”
“I am only too glad of the quiet.”
“Because Lifford is in great need of thorough rest. He has not been away for more than a year, and now he is getting quite knocked up. All he does care to do, is to take lodgings near his wife’s asylum, poor man, and see her occasionally: sad work, but it is rest, and winds him up again; and there is no one but myself to whom he likes to leave my uncle. Strangers always do too little or too much; and there is a young man at Littleworthy for the long vacation who can help on a Sunday.”
“Oh, pray let us stay as long as we can!”
“Giving up the Cretins?”
“It is no sacrifice. I am thankful not to be hunted about; and if anything could make me better pleased to be here, it would be feeling that I was not hindering you.”
“Then I will hunt him away for six weeks or two months at least. It will be a great relief to my uncle’s mind.”
It was so great a relief that Mr. Clare could hardly bring himself to accept the sacrifice of the honeymoon, and though there could be little doubt which way the discussion would end, he had not yielded when the ponies bore off Rachel on Monday morning.
Timber End was certainly a delightful place. Alick had railed it a cockney villa, but it was in good taste, and very fair and sweet with flowers and shade. Bessie’s own rooms, where she made Rachel charmingly at home, were wonderful in choiceness and elegance, exciting Rachel’s surprise how it could be possible to be so sumptuously lodged in such a temporary abode, for the house was only hired for a few months, while Gowanbrae was under repair. It was within such easy reach of London that Bessie had been able from thence to go through the more needful season gaieties; and she had thought it wise, both for herself and Lord Keith, not to enter on their full course. It sounded very moderate and prudent, and Rachel felt vexed with herself and Alick for recollecting a certain hint of his, that Lady Keith felt herself more of a star in her own old neighbourhood than she could be in London, and wisely abstained from a full flight till she had tried her wings. It was much pleasanter to go along with Bessie’s many far better and more affectionate reasons for prudence, and her minutely personal confidences about her habits, hopes, and fears, given with a strong sense of her own importance and consideration, yet with a warm sisterly tone that made them tokens of adoption, and with an arch drollery that invested them with a sort of grace. The number of engagements that she mentioned in town and country did indeed seem inconsistent with the prudence she spoke of with regard to her own health, or with her attention to that of her husband; but it appeared that all were quite necessary and according to his wishes, and the London ones were usually for the sake of trying to detach his daughter, Mrs. Comyn Menteith, from the extravagant set among whom she had fallen. Bessie was excessively diverting in her accounts of her relations with this scatter-brained step-daughter of hers, and altogether showed in the most flattering manner how much more thoroughly she felt herself belonging to her brother’s wife. If she had ever been amazed or annoyed at Alick’s choice, she had long ago surmounted the feeling, or put it out of sight, and she judiciously managed to leap over all that had passed since the beginning of the intimacy that had arisen at the station door at Avoncester. It was very flattering, and would have been perfectly delightful, if Rachel had not found herself wearying for Alick, and wondering whether at the end of seven months she should be as contented as Bessie seemed, to know her husband to be in the sitting-room without one sight of him.
At luncheon, however, when Lord Keith appeared, nothing could be prettier than his wife’s manner to him—bright, sweet, and with a touch of graceful deference, at which he always smiled and showed himself pleased, but Rachel thought him looking much older than in the autumn—he had little appetite, stooped a good deal, and evidently moved with pain. He would not go out of doors, and Bessie, after following him to the library, and spending a quarter of an hour in ministering to his comfort, took Rachel to sit by a cool dancing fountain in the garden, and began with some solicitude to consult her whether he could be really suffering from sciatica, or, as she had lately begun to suspect, from the effects of a blow from the end of a scaffold-pole that had been run against him when taking her through a crowded street. Rachel spoke of advice.
“What you, Rachel! you who despised allopathy!”
“I have learnt not to despise advice.”
And Bessie would not trench on Rachel’s experiences.
“There’s some old Scotch doctor to whom his faith is given, and that I don’t half believe in. If he would see our own Mr. Harvey here it would be quite another thing; but it is of no use telling him that Alick would never have had an available knee but for Mr. Harvey’s management. He persists in leaving me to my personal trust in him, but for himself he won’t see him at any price! Have you seen Mr. Harvey?”
“I have seen no one.”
“Oh, I forgot, you are not arrived yet; but—”
“There’s some one,” exclaimed Rachel, nervously; and in fact a young man was sauntering towards them. Bessie rose with a sort of annoyance, and “Never mind, my dear, he is quite inoffensive, we’ll soon get rid of him.” Then, as he greeted her with “Good morning, Lady Keith, I thought I should find you here,” she quickly replied.
“If you had been proper behaved and gone to the door, you would have known that I am not at home.”
He smiled, and came nearer.
“No, I am not at home, and, what is more, I do not mean to be. My uncle will be here directly,” she added, in a fee-faw-fum tone.
“Then it is not true that your brother and his bride are arrived?”
“True in the same sense as that I am at home. There she is, you see—only you are not to see her on any account,” as a bow necessarily passed between him and Rachel. “Now mind you have not been introduced to Mrs. Keith, and if you utter a breath that will bring the profane crowd in shoals upon the Rectory, I shall never forgive you.”
“Then I am afraid we must not hope to see you at the bazaar for the idiots.”
“No, indeed,” Bessie answered, respecting Rachel’s gesture of refusal; “no one is to infringe her incog, under penalty of never coming here again.”
“You are going?” he added to Bessie; “indeed, that was what brought me here. My sisters sent me to ask whether they may shelter themselves under your matronly protection, for my mother dreads the crush.”
“I suppose, as they put my name down, that I must go, but you know I had much rather give the money outright. It is a farce to call a bazaar charity.”
“Call it what you will, it is one device for a little sensation.”
Rachel’s only sensation at that moment was satisfaction at the sudden appearance of Ranger’s white head, the sure harbinger of his master and Alick, and she sprang up to meet them in the shrubbery path—all her morbid shyness at the sight of a fresh face passing away when her hand was within Alick’s arm. When they came forth upon the lawn, Alick’s brow darkened for a moment, and there was a formal exchange of greetings as the guest retreated.
“I am so sorry,” began Bessie at once; “I had taken precautions against invasion, but he did not go to the front door. I do so hope Rachel has not been fluttered.”
“I thought he was at Rio,” said Alick.
“He could not stand the climate, and was sent home about a month ago—a regular case of bad shilling, I am afraid, poor fellow! I am so sorry he came to startle Rachel, but I swore him over to secrecy. He is not to mention to any living creature that she is nearer than Plinlimmon till the incog, is laid aside! I know how to stand up for bridal privileges, and not to abuse the confidence placed in me.”
Any one who was up to the game might have perceived that the sister was trying to attribute all the brother’s tone of disapprobation to his anxiety lest his wife should have been startled, while both knew as well as possible that there was a deeper ground of annoyance which was implied in Alick’s answer.
“He seems extremely tame about the garden.”
“Or he would not have fallen on Rachel. It was only a chance; he just brought over a message about that tiresome bazaar that has been dinned into our ears for the last three months. A bazaar for idiots they may well call it! They wanted a carving of yours, Uncle George!”
“I am afraid I gave little Alice Bertie one in a weak moment, Bessie,” said Mr. Clare, “but I hardly durst show my face to Lifford afterwards.”
“After all, it is better than some bazaars,” said Bessie; “it is only for the idiot asylum, and I could not well refuse my name and countenance to my old neighbours, though I stood out against taking a stall. Lord Keith would not have liked it.”
“Will he be able to go with you?” asked Alick.
“Oh, no; it would be an intolerable bore, and his Scottish thrift would never stand the sight of people making such very bad bargains! No, I am going to take the Carleton girls in, they are very accommodating, and I can get away whenever I please. I am much too forbearing to ask any of you to go with me, though I believe Uncle George is pining to go and see after his carving.”
“No, thank you; after what I heard of the last bazaar I made up my mind that they are no places for an old parson, nor for his carvings either, so you are quite welcome to fall on me for my inconsistency.”
“Not now, when you have a holiday from Mr. Lifford,” returned Bessie. “Now come and smell the roses.”
All the rest of the day Alick relapsed into the lazy frivolous young officer with whom Rachel had first been acquainted.
As he was driving home in the cool fresh summer night, he began—
“I think I must go to this idiotical bazaar!”
“You!” exclaimed Rachel.
“Yes; I don’t think Bessie ought to go by herself with all this Carleton crew.”
“You don’t wish me to go,” said Rachel, gulping down the effort.
“You! My dear Rachel, I would not take you for fifty pounds, nor could I go myself without leaving you as vice deputy curate.”
“No need for that,” said Mr. Clare, from the seat behind; “young people must not talk secrets with a blind man’s ears behind them.”
“I make no secret,” said Alick. “I could not go without leaving my wife to take care of my uncle, or my uncle to take care of my wife.”
“And you think you ought to go?” said Mr. Clare. “It is certainly better that Bessie should have a gentleman with her in the crowd; but you know this is a gossiping neighbourhood, and you must be prepared for amazement at your coming into public alone not three weeks after your wedding.”
“I can’t help it, she can’t go, and I must.”
“And you will bring down all the morning visitors that you talk of dreading.”
“We will leave you to amuse them, sir. Much better that,” he added between his teeth, “than to leave the very semblance of a secret trusted by her to that intolerable puppy—”
Rachel said no more, but when she was gone upstairs Mr. Clare detained his nephew to say, “I beg your pardon, Alick, but you should be quite sure that your wife likes this proposal.”
“That’s the value of a strong-minded wife, sir,” returned Alick; “she is not given to making a fuss about small matters.”
“Most ladies might not think this a small matter.”
“That is because they have no perspective in their brains. Rachel understands me a great deal too well to make me explain what is better unspoken.”
“You know what I think, Alick, that you are the strictest judge that ever a merry girl had.”
“I had rather you continued to think so, uncle; I should like to think so myself. Good night.”
Alick was right, but whether or not Rachel entered into his motives, she made no objection to his going to the bazaar with his sister, being absolutely certain that he would not have done so if he could have helped it.
Nor was her day at all dreary; Mr. Clare was most kind and attentive to her, without being oppressive, and she knew she was useful to him. She was indeed so full of admiration and reverence for him, that once or twice it crossed her whether she were not belying another of her principles by lapsing into Curatocult, but the idea passed away with scorn at the notion of comparing Mr. Clare with the objects of such devotion. He belonged to that generation which gave its choicest in intellectual, as well as in religious gifts to the ministry, when a fresh tide of enthusiasm was impelling men forward to build up, instead of breaking down, before disappointment and suspicion had thinned the ranks, and hurled back many a recruit, or doctrinal carpings had taught men to dread a search into their own tenets. He was a highly cultivated, large-minded man, and the conversation between him and his nephew was a constant novelty to her, who had always yearned after depth and thought, and seldom met with them. Still here she was constantly feeling how shallow were her acquirements, how inaccurate her knowledge, how devoid of force and solidity her reasonings compared with what here seemed to be old, well-beaten ground. Nay, the very sparkle of fun and merriment surprised and puzzled her; and all the courtesy of the one gentleman, and the affection of the other, could not prevent her sometimes feeling herself the dullest and most ignorant person present. And yet the sense was never mortifying except when here and there a spark of the old conceit had lighted itself, and lured her into pretensions where she thought herself proficient. She was becoming more and more helpful to Mr. Clare, and his gratitude for her services made them most agreeable, nor did that atmosphere of peace and sincerity that reigned round the Rectory lose its charm. She was really happy all through the solitary Wednesday, and much more contented with the results than was Alick. “A sickening place,” he said, “I am glad I went.”
“How glad Bessie must have been to have you!”
“I believe she was. She has too much good taste for much of what went on there.”
“I doubt,” said Mr. Clare, laughing, “if you could have been an agreeable acquisition.”
“I don’t know. Bessie fools one into thinking oneself always doing her a favour. Oh, Rachel, I am thankful you have never taken to being agreeable.”
CHAPTER XXV. THE HUNTSFORD CROQUET
“Une femme egoiste, non seulement de coeur, mais d’esprit, ne pent pas sortir d’elle-meme. Le moi est indelible chez elle. Une veritable egoiste ne sait meme pas etre fausse.”
—MME. E. DE GIRARDIN.
“I am come to prepare you,” said Lady Keith, putting her arm into her brother’s, and leading him into the peacock path. “Mrs. Huntsford is on her way to call and make a dead set to get you all to a garden party.”
“Then we are off to the Earlsworthy Woods.”
“Nay, listen, Alick. I have let you alone and defended you for a whole month, but if you persist in shutting up you wife, people won’t stand it.”
“Which of us is the Mahometan?”
“You are pitied! But you see it was a strong thing our appearing without our several incumbrances, and though an old married woman like me may do as she pleases, yet for a bridegroom of not three weeks’ standing to resort to bazaars solus argues some weighty cause.”
“And argues rightly.”
“Then you are content to be supposed to have an unproduceably eccentric melancholy bride?”
“Better they should think so than that she should be so. She has been victimized enough already to her mother’s desire to save appearances.”
“You do not half believe me, Alick, and this is really a very kind, thoughtful arrangement of Mrs. Huntsford’s. She consulted me, saying there were such odd stories about you two that she was most anxious that Rachel should appear and confute them; and she thought that an out-of-door party like this would suit best, because it would be early, and Rachel could get away if she found it too much for her.”
“After being walked out to satisfy a curious neighbourhood.”
“Now Alick, do consider it. This sort of thing could remind her of nothing painful; Uncle George would enjoy it.”
“And fall over the croquet traps.”
“No; if you wanted to attend to him, I could take care of Rachel.”
“I cannot tell, Bessie, I believe it is pure goodnature on Mrs. Huntsford’s part, but if we go, it must be from Rachel’s spontaneous movement. I will not press her on any account. I had rather the world said she was crazy at once than expose her to the risk of one of the dreadful nights that haunted us till we came here to perfect quiet.”
“But she is well now. She looks better and nicer than I ever saw her. Really, Alick, now her face is softer, and her eyes more veiled, and her chin not cocked up, I am quite proud of her. Every one will be struck with her good looks.”
“Flattery, Bessie,” he said, not ill pleased. “Yes, she is much better, and more like herself; but I dread all this being overthrown. If she herself wishes to go, it may be a good beginning, but she must not be persuaded.”
“Then I must not even tell her that she won’t be required to croquet, and that I’ll guard her from all civil speeches.”
“No, for indeed, Bessie, on your own account and Lord Keith’s, you should hardly spend a long afternoon from home.”
“Here’s the war in the enemy’s quarters! As to fatigue, dawdling about Mrs. Huntsford’s garden, is much the same as dawdling about my own, and makes me far more entertaining.”
“I cannot help thinking, Bessie, that Lord Keith is more ill than you suppose. I am sure he is in constant pain.”
“So I fear,” said Bessie, gravely; “but what can be done? He will see no one but his old surgeon in Edinburgh.”
“Then take him there.”
“Take him? You must know what it is to be in the hands of a clever woman before you make such a proposal.”
“You are a cleverer woman than my wife in bringing about what you really wish.”
“Just consider, Alick, our own house is uninhabitable, and this one on our hands—my aunt coming to me in a month’s time. You don’t ask me to do what is reasonable.”
“I cannot tell, Bessie. You can be the only judge of what is regard of the right kind for your husband’s health or for yourself; and see, there is Mrs. Huntsford actually arrived, and talking to my uncle.”
“One moment, Alick: I am not going to insult myself so far as to suppose that poor Charlie Carleton’s being at home has anything to do with your desire to deport me, but I want you to know that he did not come home till after we were settled here.”
“I do not wish to enter into details, Bessie,” and he crossed the lawn towards the window where Mr. Clare and Rachel had just received Mrs. Huntsford, a goodnatured joyous-looking lady, a favourite with every one. Her invitation was dexterously given to meet a few friends at luncheon, and in the garden, where the guests would be free to come and go; there might perhaps be a little dancing later, she had secured some good music which would, she knew, attract Mr. Clare, and she hoped he would bring Captain and Mrs. Keith. She knew Mrs. Keith had not been well, but she promised her a quiet room to rest in, and she wanted to show her a view of the Devon coast done by a notable artist in water-colours. Rachel readily accepted—in fact, this quiet month had been so full of restoration that she had almost forgotten her morbid shrinking from visitors; and Bessie infused into her praise and congratulations a hint that a refusal would have been much against Alick’s reputation, so that she resolved to keep up to the mark, even though he took care that she should know that she might yet retract.
“You did not wish me to refuse, Alick,” said she, struck by his grave countenance, when she found him lying on the slope of the lawn shortly after, in deep thought.
“No, not at all,” he replied; “it is likely to be a pleasant affair, and my uncle will be delighted to have us with him. No,” he added, seeing that she still looked at him inquisitively, “it is the old story. My sister! Poor little thing! I always feel as though I wore more unkind and unjust to her than any one else, and yet we are never together without my feeling as if she was deceiving herself and me; and yet it is all so fair and well reasoned that one is always left in the wrong. I regretted this marriage extremely at first, and I am not the less disposed to regret it now.”
“Indeed! Every one says how attentive she is to him, and how nicely they go on together.”
“Pshaw, Rachel! that is just the way. A few words and pretty ways pass with her and all the world for attention, when she is wherever her fancy calls her, all for his good. It is just the attention she showed my uncle. And now it is her will and pleasure to queen it here among her old friends, and she will not open her eyes to see the poor old man’s precarious state.”
“Do you think him so very ill, Alick?”
“I was shocked when I saw him yesterday. As to sciatica, that is all nonsense; the blow in his side has done some serious damage, and if it is not well looked-to, who knows what will be the end of it! And then, a gay young widow with no control over her—I hate to think of it.”
“Indeed,” said Rachel, “she is so warm and bright, and really earnest in her kindness, that she will be sure to see her own way right at home. I don’t think we can guess how obstinate Lord Keith may be in refusing to take advice.”
“He cut me off pretty short,” said Alick. “I am afraid he will see no one here; and, as Bessie says, the move to Scotland would not be easy just now. As I said, she leaves one in the wrong, and I don’t like the future. But it is of no use to talk of it; so let us come and see if my uncle wants to go anywhere.”
It was Alick’s fate never to meet with sympathy in his feeling of his sister’s double-mindedness. Whether it were that he was mistaken, or that she really had the gift of sincerity for the moment in whatever she was saying, the most candid and transparent people in the world—his uncle and his wife—never even succeeded in understanding his dissatisfaction with Bessie’s doings, but always received them at her own valuation. Even while he had been looking forward, with hope deferred, to her residence with him as the greatest solace the world could yet afford him, Mr. Clare had always been convinced that her constant absence from his Rectory, except when his grand neighbours were at home, had been unavoidable, and had always credited the outward tokens of zealous devotion to his church and parish, and to all that was useful or good elsewhere. In effect there was a charm about her which no one but her brother ever resisted, and even he held out by an exertion that made him often appear ungracious.
However, for the present the uneasiness was set aside, in the daily avocations of the Rectory, where Alick was always a very different person from what he appeared in Lady Temple’s drawing-room, constantly engaged as he was by unobtrusive watchfulness over his uncle, and active and alert in this service in a manner that was a curious contrast to his ordinary sauntering ways. As to Rachel, the whole state of existence was still a happy dream. She floated on from day to day in the tranquil activity of the Rectory, without daring to look back on the past or to think out her present frame of mind; it was only the languor and rest of recovery after suffering, and her husband was heedfully watching her, fearing the experiment of the croquet party, though on many accounts feeling the necessity of its being made.
Ermine’s hint, that with Rachel it rested to prevent her unpopularity from injuring her husband, had not been thrown away, and she never manifested any shrinking from the party, and even took some interest in arraying herself for it.
“That is what I call well turned out,” exclaimed Alick, when she came down.
“Describe her dress, if you please,” said Mr. Clare, “I like to hear how my nieces look.”
Alick guided his hand. “There, stroke it down, a long white feather in a shady hat trimmed with dark green, velvet; she is fresh and rosy, you know, sir, and looks well in green, and then, is it Grace’s taste, Rachel? for it is the prettiest thing you have worn—a pale buff sort of silky thing, embroidered all over in the same colour,” and he put a fold of the dress into his uncle’s hand.
“Indian, surely,” said Mr. Clare, feeling the pattern, “it is too intricate and graceful for the West.”
“Yes,” said Alick, “I remember now, Grace showed it to me. It was one that Lady Temple brought from India, and never had made up. Poor Grace could get no sympathy from Rachel about the wedding clothes, so she was obliged to come to me.”
“And I thought you did not know one of my things from another,” said Rachel. “Do you really mean that you care?”
“Depend upon it, he does, my dear,” said Mr. Clare. “I have heard him severely critical on his cousins.”
“He has been very good in not tormenting me,” said Rachel, nestling nearer to him.
“I apprehended the consequences,” said Alick, “and besides, you never mounted that black lace pall, or curtain, or whatever you call it, upon your head, after your first attempt at frightening me away with it.”
“A cap set against, instead of at,” said Mr. Clare, laughing; and therewith his old horse was heard clattering in the yard, and Alick proceeded to drive the well-used phaeton about three miles through Earlsworthy Park, to a pleasant-looking demesne in the village beyond. As they were turning in at the gate, up came Lady Keith with her two brisk little Shetlands. She was one mass of pretty, fresh, fluttering blue and white muslin, ribbon, and lace, and looked particularly well and brilliant.
“Well met,” she said, “I called at the Rectory to take up Rachel, but you were flown before me.”
“Yes, we went through the Park.”
“I wish the Duke would come home. I can’t go that way now till I have called. I have no end of things to say to you,” she added, and her little lively ponies shot ahead of the old rectorial steed. However, she waited at the entrance. “Who do you think is come? Colin Keith made his appearance this morning. He has safely captured his Ouralian bear, though not without plenty of trouble, and he could not get him on to Avonmouth till he had been to some chemical institution about an invention. Colin thought him safe there, and rushed down by the train to see us. They go on to-morrow.”
“What did he think of Lord Keith?” said Alick, in the more haste because he feared something being said to remind Rachel that this was the assize week at Avoncester.
“He has settled the matter about advice,” said Bessie, seriously; “you cannot think what a relief it is. I mean, as soon as I get home, to write and ask Mr. Harvey to come and talk to me to-morrow, and see if the journey to Edinburgh is practicable. I almost thought of sending an apology, and driving over to consult him this afternoon, but I did not like to disappoint Mrs. Huntsford, and I thought Rachel would feel herself lost.”
“Thank you,” said Rachel, “but could we not go away early, and go round by Mr. Harvey’s?”
“Unluckily I have sent the ponies home, and told the close carriage to come for me at nine. It was all settled, and I don’t want to alarm Lord Keith by coming home too soon.”
