Kitabı oku: «The Young Step-Mother; Or, A Chronicle of Mistakes», sayfa 16
This conversation had made an impression on Sophy, who took the first opportunity of expressing her indignation at the system of mariages de convenance.
‘And, mamma, she said if people began with love, it always grew cold. Now, has not papa loved you better and better every day?’
Albinia could not be displeased, though it made her blush, and she could not answer such a home push. ‘We don’t quite mean the same things,’ she said evasively. ‘Madame is thinking of passion independent of esteem or confidence. But, Sophy, this is enough even for a wedding-day. Let us leave it off with our finery, and resume daily life.’
‘Only tell me one thing, mamma.’
‘Well?’
She paused and brought it out with an effort. It had evidently occupied her for a long time. ‘Mamma, must not every one with feeling be in love once in their life?’
‘Well done, reserve!’ thought Albinia—‘but she is only a child, after all; not a blush, only those great eyes seeming ready to devour my answer. What ought it to be? Whatever it is, she will brood on it till her time comes. I must begin, or I shall grow nervous: “Dear Sophy, these are not things good to think upon. There is quite enough to occupy a Christian woman’s heart and soul without that—no need for her feelings to shrivel up for want of exercise. No, I don’t believe in the passion once in the life being a fate, and pray don’t you, my Sophy, or you may make yourself very silly, or very unhappy, or both.”’
Sophy drew up her head, and her brown skin glowed. Albinia feared that she had said the wrong thing, and affronted her, but it was all working in the dark.
At any rate the sullenness was dissipated, and there were no tokens of a recurrence. Sophy set herself to find ways of making amends for the past, and as soon as she had begun to do little services for grandmamma, she seemed to have forgotten her gloomy anticipations, even while some of them were partly realized. For as it would be more than justice to human nature to say that Mrs. Meadows’s residence at Willow Lawn was a perfect success, so it would be less than justice to call it a failure.
To put the darker side first. Grandmamma’s interest in life was to know the proceedings of the whole household, and comment on each. Now Albinia could endure housewifely advice, some espionage on her servants, and even counsel about her child; but she could not away with the anxiety that would never leave Sophy alone, tried to force her sociability, and regretted all extra studies, unable to perceive the delicate treatment her disposition needed. And Sophy, in the intolerance of early girlhood, was wretched at hearing poor grandmamma’s petty views, and narrow, ignorant prejudices. She might resolve to be filial and agreeable, but too often found herself just achieving a moody, disgusted silence, or else bursting out with some true but unbecoming reproof.
On the whole, all did well. Mrs. Meadows was happy; she enjoyed the animation of the larger party, liked their cheerful faces, grew fond of Maurice, and daily more dependent on Lucy and Mrs. Kendal. Probably she had never before had so much of her own way, and her gentle placid nature was left to rest, instead of being constantly worried. Her son-in-law was kind and gracious, though few words passed between them, and he gave her a sense of protection. Indeed, his patience and good-humour were exemplary; he never complained even when he was driven from the dining-room by the table-cloth, to find Maurice rioting in the morning-room, and a music lesson in the drawing-room, or still worse, when he heard the Drurys everywhere; and he probably would have submitted quietly for the rest of his life, had not Albinia insisted on bringing forward the plan of building.
When Captain and Mrs. Pringle returned to Bayford to take leave, they found grandmamma so thoroughly at home, that Maria could find no words to express her gratitude. Maria herself could hardly have been recognised, she had grown so like her husband in look and manner! If her sentences did not always come to their legitimate development, they no longer seemed blown away by a frosty wind, but pushed aside by fresh kindly impulses, and her pride in the Captain, and the rest in his support, had set her at peace with all the world and with herself. A comfortable, comely, happy matron was she, and even her few weeks beyond the precincts of Bayford had done something to enlarge her mind.
It was as if her education had newly begun. The fixed aim, and the union with a practical man, had opened her faculties, not deficient in themselves, but contracted and nipped by the circumstances which she had not known how to turn to good account. Such a fresh stage in middle life comes to some few, like the midsummer shoot to repair the foliage that has suffered a spring blight; but it cannot be reckoned on, and Mrs. Pringle would have been a more effective and self-possessed woman, a better companion to her husband, and with more root in herself, had Maria Meadows learnt to tune her nerves and her temper in the overthrow of her early hopes.
CHAPTER XIV
Maurice Ferrars was a born architect, with such a love of brick and mortar, that it was meritorious in him not to have overbuilt Fairmead parsonage. With the sense of giving him an agreeable holiday, his sister wrote to him in February that Gilbert’s little attic was at his service if he would come and give his counsel as to the building project.
Mr. Kendal disliked the trouble and disturbance as much as Maurice loved it; but he quite approved and submitted, provided they asked him no questions; he gave them free leave to ruin him, and set out to take Sophy for a drive, leaving the brother and sister to their calculations. Of ruin, there was not much danger, Mr. Kendal had a handsome income, and had always lived within it; and Albinia’s fortune had not appeared to her a reason for increased expense, so there was a sufficient sum in hand to enable Mr. Ferrars to plan with freedom.
A new drawing-room, looking southwards, with bedrooms over it, was the matter of necessity; and Albinia wished for a bay-window, and would like to indulge Lucy by a conservatory, filling up the angle to the east with glass doors opening into the drawing-room and hall. Maurice drew, and she admired, and thought all so delightful, that she began to be taken with scruples as to luxury.
‘No,’ said Maurice, ‘these are not mere luxuries. You have full means, and it is a duty to keep your household fairly comfortable and at ease. Crowded as you are with rather incongruous elements, you are bound to give them space enough not to clash.’
‘They don’t clash, except poor Sophy. Gilbert and Lucy are elements of union, with more plaster of Paris than stone in their nature.’
‘Pray, has Kendal made up his mind what to do with Gilbert?’
‘I have heard nothing lately; I hope he is grown too old for India.’
‘Gilbert is rather too well off for his good,’ said Mr. Ferrars; ‘the benefit of a profession is not evident enough.’
‘I know what I wish! If he could but be Mr. Dusautoy’s curate, in five or six years’ time, what glorious things we might do with the parish!’
‘Eh! is that his wish?’
‘I have sometimes hoped that his mind is taking that turn. He is ready to help in anything for the poor people. Once he told me he never wished to look beyond Bayford for happiness or occupation; but I did not like to draw him out, because of his father’s plans. Why, what have you drawn? The alms-houses?’
‘I could do no other when I was improving Gilbert’s house for him.’
‘That would be the real improvement! How pretty! I will keep them for him.’
The second post came in, bringing a letter from Gilbert to his father, and Albinia was so much surprised, that her brother asked whether Gilbert were one of the boys who only write to their father with a reason.
‘He can write more freely to me,’ said Albinia; ‘and it comes to the same thing. I am not in the least afraid of anything wrong, but perhaps he may be making some proposal for the future. I want to know how he is. Fancy his being so foolish as to go out bathing. I am afraid of his colds.’
Many times during the consultation did Mr. Ferrars detect Albinia’s eye stealing wistfully towards that ‘E. Kendal, Esq.;’ and when the proper owner came in, he was evidently as much struck, for he paused, as if in dread of opening the letter. Her eyes were on his countenance as he read, and did not gather much consolation. ‘I am afraid this is serious,’ at last he said.
‘His cold?’ exclaimed Albinia.
‘Yes,’ said Mr. Kendal, reading aloud sentence by sentence, with gravity and consideration.
‘I do not wish to alarm Mrs. Kendal, and therefore address myself at once to you, for I do not think it right to keep you in ignorance that I have had some of the old symptoms. I do not wish to make any one uneasy about me, and I may have made light of the cold I caught a month since; but I cannot conceal from myself that I have much painful cough, an inclination to shortness of breath, and pain in the back and shoulders, especially after long reading or writing. I thought it right to speak to Mr. Downton, but people in high health can understand nothing short of a raging fever; however, at last he called in the parish surgeon, a stupid, ignorant fellow, who understands my case no more than his horse, and treats me with hyoscyamus, as if it were a mere throat-cough. I thought it my duty to speak openly, since, though I am quite aware that circumstances make little difference in constitutional cases, I know you and dear Mrs. Kendal will wish that all possible means should be used, and I think it—’
Mr. Kendal broke down, and handed the letter to his wife, who proceeded,
‘I think it best you should be prepared for the worst, as I wish and endeavour to be; and truly I see so much trial and disappointment in the course of life before me, that it would hardly be the worst to me, except—’
That sentence finished Albinia’s voice, and stealing her hand into her husband’s, she read on in silence,
‘for the additional sorrow to you, and my grief at bringing pain to my more than mother, but she has long known of the presentiment that has always hung over me, and will be the better prepared for its realization. If it would be any satisfaction to you, I could easily take a ticket, and go up to London to see any physician you would prefer. I could go with Price, who is going for his sister’s birthday, and I could sleep at his father’s house; but, in that case, I should want three pounds journey money, and I should be very glad if you would be so kind as to let me have a sovereign in advance of my allowance, as Price knows of a capital secondhand bow and arrows. With my best love to all,
‘Your affectionate son, ‘GILBERT KENDAL.’
Albinia held the letter to her brother, to whom she looked for something cheering, but, behold! a smile was gaining uncontrollably on the muscles of his cheeks, though his lips strove hard to keep closely shut. She would not look at him, and turning to her husband, exclaimed, ‘We will take him to London ourselves!’
‘I am afraid that would be inconvenient,’ observed Maurice.
‘That would not signify,’ continued Albinia; ‘I must hear myself what is thought of him, and how I am to nurse him. Oh! taking it in time, dear Edmund, we need not be so much afraid! Maurice will not mind making his visit another time.’
‘I only meant inconvenient to the birthday party,’ drily said her brother.
‘Maurice!’ cried she, ‘you don’t know the boy!’
‘I have no doubt that he has a cold.’
‘And I know there is a great deal more the matter!’ cried Albinia. ‘We have let him go away to be neglected and badly treated! My poor, dear boy! Edmund, I will fetch him home to-morrow.’
‘You had better send me,’ said Maurice, mischievously, for he saw he was diminishing Mr. Kendal’s alarm, and had a brotherly love of teasing Albinia, and seeing how pretty she looked with her eyes flashing through wrathful tears, and her foot patting impetuously on the carpet.
‘You!’ she cried; ‘you don’t believe in him! You fancy all boys are made of iron and steel—you would only laugh at him—you made us send him there—I wish—’
‘Gently, gently, my dear Albinia,’ said her husband, dismayed at her vehemence, just when it most amused her brother. ‘You cannot expect Maurice to feel exactly as we do, and I confess that I have much hope that this alarm may be more than adequate.’
‘He thinks it all a scheme!’ said Albinia, in a tone of great injury.
‘No, indeed, Albinia,’ answered her brother, seriously, ‘I fully believe that Gilbert imagines all that he tells you, but you cannot suppose that either the tutor or doctor could fail to see if he were so very ill.’
‘Certainly not,’ assented Mr. Kendal.
‘And low spirits are more apt to accompany a slight ailment, than such an illness as you apprehend.’
‘I believe you are right,’ said Mr. Kendal. ‘Where is the letter?’
Albinia did not like it to come under discussion, but could not withhold it, and as she read it again, she felt that neither Maurice nor her cousin Fred could have written the like, but she was only the more impelled to do battle, and when she came to the unlucky conclusion, she exclaimed, ‘I am sure that was an afterthought. I dare say Price asked him while he was writing.’
‘What’s this?’ asked Mr. Kendal, coming to the ‘presentiment.’
She hesitated, afraid both of him and of Maurice, but there was no alternative. ‘Poor Gilbert!’ she said. ‘It was a cry or call from his brother just at last. It has left a very deep impression.’
‘Indeed!’ said his father, much moved. ‘Yes. Edmund gave a cry such as was not to be forgotten,’ and the sigh told how it had haunted his own pillow; ‘but I had not thought that Gilbert was in a condition to notice it. Did he mention it to you?’
‘Yes, not long after I came, he thinks it was a call, and I have never known exactly how to deal with it.’
‘It is a case for very tender handling,’ said Maurice.
‘I should have desired him never to think of it again,’ said Mr. Kendal, decidedly. ‘Mere nonsense to dwell on it. Their names were always in Edmund’s mouth, and it was nothing but accident. You should have told him so, Albinia.’
And he walked out of the room.
‘Ah! it will prey upon him now,’ said Albinia.
‘Yes, I thought he only spoke of driving it away because it was what he would like to be able to do. But things do not prey on people of his age as they do on younger ones.’
‘I wonder if I did right,’ said Albinia. ‘I never liked to ask you, though I wished it. I could not bear to treat it as a fancy. How was I to know, if it may not have been intended to do him good? And you see his father says it was very remarkable.’
‘Do you imagine that it dwells much upon his mind?’
‘Not when he is well—not when it would do him good,’ said Albinia; ‘it rather haunts him the instant he is unwell.’
‘He makes it a superstition, then, poor boy! You thought me hard on him, Albinia; but really I could not help being angry with him for so lamentably frightening his father and you.’
‘Let us see how he is before you find fault with him,’ said Albinia.
‘You’re as bad as if you were his mother, or worse!’ exclaimed Maurice.
‘Oh! Maurice, I can’t help it! He had no one to care for him till I came, and he is such a very dear fellow—he wants me so much!’
Mr. Ferrars agreed to go with Mr. Kendal to Traversham. He thought his father would be encouraged by his presence, and he was not devoid of curiosity. Albinia would not hear of staying at home; in fact, Maurice suspected her of being afraid to trust Gilbert to his mercy.
With a trembling heart she left the train at the little Traversham station, making resolutions neither to be too angry with the negligent tutor, nor to show Gilbert how much importance she attached to his illness.
As they walked into the village, they heard a merry clamour of tongue, and presently met five or six boys, and, a few paces behind them, Mr. Downton.
‘Ah!’ he exclaimed, ‘I am glad you are come. I would have written yesterday, but that I found your boy had done so. I shall be very glad to have him cheered up about himself. I will turn back with you. You go on, Price. They are setting out for one of Hullah’s classes, so we shall have the house clear.’
‘I hope there is not much amiss?’ said Mr. Kendal.
‘A tedious cold,’ said the tutor; ‘but the doctor assures me that there is nothing wrong with his chest, and I do believe he would not cough half so much, if he were not always watching himself.’
‘Who has been attending him?’
‘Lee, the union doctor, a very good man, with a large family,’ (Albinia could have beaten him). ‘Indeed,’ he continued perceiving some dissatisfied looks, ‘I think you will find that a little change is all that he wants.’
‘I hope you can give a good account of him in other respects?’ said Mr. Kendal.
‘Oh! yes, in every way; he is the most good-natured lad in the world, and quite the small boys’ friend. Perhaps he has been a little more sentimental of late, but that may be only from being rather out of order. I’ll call him.’
The last words were spoken as they entered the parsonage, where opening a door, he said, ‘Here, Kendal, here’s a new prescription for you.’
Albinia had a momentary view of a tabby-cat and kitten, a volume of poetry, a wiry-haired terrier, and Gilbert, all lying promiscuously on the hearth-rug, before the two last leaped up, the one to bark, and the other to come forward with outstretched hand, and glad countenance.
He looked flushed and languid, but the roaring fire and close room might account for that, and though, when the subject was mentioned, he gave a short uncomfortable cough, Albinia’s mind was so far relieved, that she was in doubt with whom to be angry, and prepared to stand on the defensive, should her brother think him too well.
The gentlemen went away together, and Gilbert, grasping her hand, gave way to one of his effusions of affection—‘So kind to come to him—he knew he had her to trust to, whatever happened’—and he leant his cheek on his hand in a melancholy mood.
‘Don’t be so piteous, Gibbie,’ she said. ‘You were quite right to tell us you were not well, only you need not have been so very doleful, I don’t like papa to be frightened.’
‘I thought it was no use to go on in this way,’ said Gilbert, with a cough: ‘it was the old thing over again, and nobody would believe I had anything the matter with me.’
And he commenced a formidable catalogue of symptoms which satisfied her that Maurice would think him fully justified. Just at a point where it was not easy to know what next to say, the kitten began to play tricks with her mother’s tail, and a happy diversion was made; Gilbert began to exhibit the various drolleries of the animals, to explain the friendship between dog and cat, and to leave off coughing as he related anecdotes of their sagacity; and finally, when the gentlemen returned, laughing was the first sound they heard, and Mrs. Kendal was found sitting on the floor at play with the livestock.
They had come to fetch her to see the church and schools, and on going out, she found that Mr. Ferrars had moved and carried that Gilbert should be taken home at once, and, on the way, be shown to a physician at the county town. From this she gathered that Maurice was compassionate, and though, of course, he would make no such admission, she had reason afterwards to believe that he had shown Mr. Downton that the pupil’s health ought to have met with a shade more attention.
With Gilbert wrapped up to the tip of his nose, they set off, and found the doctor at home. Nothing could have been more satisfactory to Albinia, for it gave her a triumph over her brother, without too much anxiety for the future. The physician detected the injury to the lungs left by an attack that the boy had suffered from in his first English winter, and had scarcely outgrown when Albinia first knew him. The recent cold had so far renewed the evil, that though no disease actually existed, the cough must be watched, and exposure avoided; in fact, a licence for petting to any extent was bestowed, and therewith every hope of recovery.
Albinia and her son sat in their corners of the carriage in secret satisfaction, while Mr. Kendal related the doctor’s opinion to Mr. Ferrars, but one of them, at least, was unprepared for the summing-up. ‘Under the circumstances, Gilbert is most fortunate. A few years in his native climate will quite set him up.’
‘Oh! but he is too old for Haileybury,’ burst out Albinia, in her consternation.
‘Nearly old enough for John Kendal’s bank, eh, Gilbert?’
‘Oh!’ cried Albinia, ‘pray don’t let us talk of that while poor Gilbert is so ill.’
‘Hm!’ said Mr. Kendal with interrogative surprise, almost displeasure, and no more was said.
Albinia felt guilty, as she remembered that she had no more intended to betray her dislike to the scheme, than to gratify Gilbert by calling him ‘so ill.’ Aristocratic and military, she had no love for the monied interest, and had so sedulously impressed on her friends that Mr. Kendal had been in the Civil Service, and quite unconnected with the bank, that Mr. Ferrars had told her she thought his respectability depended on it, and she was ashamed that her brother should hear her give way again so foolishly to the weakness.
Gilbert became the most talkative as they drew near home, and was the first to spring out and open the hall door, displaying his two sisters harnessed tandem-fashion with packthread, and driven at full speed by little Maurice, armed with the veritable carriage whip! The next moment it was thrown down, with a rapturous shout, and Maurice was lost to everything but his brother!
‘Oh! girls, how could you let him serve you so?’ began the horrified Albinia. ‘Sophy will be laid up for a week!’
‘Never mind,’ said Sophy, dropping on a chair. ‘Poor little fellow, he wished it so much!’
‘I tried to stop her, mamma,’ said Lucy, ‘but she will do as Maurice pleases.’
‘See, this is the way they will spoil my boy, the instant my back is turned!’ said Albinia. ‘What’s the use of all I can do with him, if every one else will go and be his bond-slave! I do believe Sophy would let him kill her, if he asked her!’
‘It is no real kindness,’ said Mr. Kendal. ‘Their good-nature ought not to go beyond reason.’
The elder Maurice could hardly help shrugging his shoulders. Well did he know that Mr. Kendal would have joined the team if such had been the will of that sovereign in scarlet merino, who stood with one hand in Gilbert’s, and the whip in the other.
‘Come here, Maurice,’ quoth Albinia; ‘put down the whip,’ and she extracted it from his grasp, with grave resolution, against which he made no struggle, gave it to Lucy to be put away, and seated him on her knee. ‘Now listen, Maurice; poor sister Sophy is tired, and you are never to make a horse of her. Do you hear?’
‘Yes,’ said Maurice, fidgeting.
‘Mind, if ever you make a horse of Sophy, mamma will put you into the black cupboard. You understand?’
‘Sophy shan’t be horse,’ said Maurice. ‘Sophy naughty, lazy horse. Boy has Gibbie—’
‘There’s gratitude,’ said Mr. Ferrars, as ‘Boy’ slid off his mamma’s knee, stood on tiptoe to pull the door open, and ran after Gilbert to grandmamma’s room.
‘Yes,’ said Albinia, ‘no one is grateful for services beyond all reason. So, Sophy, mind, into the cupboard he goes, the very next time you are so silly as to be a horse.’
‘To punish which of them?’ asked her brother.
‘Sophy knows,’ said Albinia.
Sophy was too miserable to smile. Sarah Anne Drury had been calling, and on hearing of Gilbert’s indisposition, had favoured them with ‘mamma’s remarks,’ and when Mrs. Kendal was blamed, Sophy had indignantly told Sarah Anne that she knew nothing about it, and had no business to interfere. Then followed the accusation, that Mrs. Kendal had set the whole family against their old friends, and Sophy had found all her own besetting sins charged upon her step-mother.
‘My dear!’ said Albinia, ‘don’t you know that if a royal tiger were to eat up your cousin John in India, the Drurys would say Mrs. Kendal always let the tigers run about loose! Nor am I sure that your faults are not my fault. I helped you to be more exclusive and intolerant, and I am sure I tried your temper, when I did not know what was the matter with you—’
‘No—no,’ said the choked voice. It would have been an immense comfort to cry, or even to be able to return the kiss; but she was a great deal too wretched to be capable of any demonstration; physically exhausted by being driven about by Maurice; mentally worn out by the attempts to be amiable, which had degenerated into wrangling, full of remorse for having made light of her brother’s illness, and, for that reason, persuaded that she was to be punished by seeing it become fatal. Not a word of all this did she say, but, dejected and silent, she spent the evening in a lonely corner of the drawing-room, while her brother, in the full pleasure of returning home, and greatly enjoying his invalid privileges, was discussing the projected improvements.
Talking at last brought back his cough with real violence, and he was sent to bed; Albinia went up with him to see that his fire burnt. He set Mr. Ferrars’s drawing of the alms-houses over his mantelshelf. ‘I shall nail it up to-morrow,’ he said. ‘I always wanted a picture here, and that’s a jolly one to look to.’
‘It would be a beautiful beginning,’ she said. ‘I think your life would go the better for it, Gibbie.’
‘I suppose old nurse would be too grand for one,’ he said, ‘but I should like to have her so near! And you must mind and keep old Mrs. Baker out of the Union for it. And that famous old blind sailor! I shall put him up a bench to sit in the sun, and spin his yarns on, and tell him to think himself at Greenwich.’
Albinia went down, only afraid that his being so very good was a dangerous symptom.
Sophy was far from well in the morning, and Albinia kept her upstairs, and sent her godfather to make her a visit. He always did her good; he knew how to probe deeply, and help her to speak, and he gave her advice with more experience than his sister, and more encouragement than her father.
Sophy said little, but her eyes had a softened look.
‘One good thing about Sophy,’ said he afterwards to his sister, ‘is, that she will never talk her feelings to death.’
‘That reserve is my great pain. I don’t get at the real being once in six months.’
‘So much the better for people living together.’
‘Well, I was thinking that you and I are a great deal more intimate and confidential when we meet now, than we used to be when we were always together.’
‘People can’t be often confidential from the innermost when they live together,’ said Maurice.
‘Since I have been a Kendal, such has been my experience.’
‘It was the same before, only we concealed it by an upper surface of chatter,’ said Maurice. ‘“As iron sharpeneth iron, so doth a man the countenance of his friend;” but if the mutual sharpening went on without intermission, both irons would wear away, and no work would be done. Aren’t you coming with me? Edmund is going to drive me to Woodside to meet the pony-carriage from home.’
‘I wish I could; but you see what happens when I go out pleasuring!’
‘Well, you can take one element of mischief with you—that imp, Maurice.’
‘Ye—es. Papa would like it, if you do.’
‘I should like you to come on worse terms.’
‘Very well, then; and Sophy is safe; I had already asked Genevieve to come and read to her this afternoon. If Gilbert can spare me, I will go.’
Gilbert did not want her, and begged Lucy not to think of staying indoors on his account. He was presently left in solitary possession of the drawing-room, whereupon he rose, settled his brown locks at the glass, arranged his tie, brushed his cuffs, leisurely walked upstairs, and tapped at the door of the morning-room, meekly asking, ‘May I come in?’ with a cough at each end of the sentence.
‘Oh! Gilbert!’ cried his anxious sister, starting up. ‘Are you come to see me?’ and she would have wheeled round her father’s arm-chair for him, but Genevieve was beforehand with her, and he sank into it, saying pathetically, ‘Ah! thank you, Miss Durant; you are come to a perfect hospital. Oh! this is too much,’ as she further gave him a footstool. ‘Oh! no, thank you, Sophy,’ for she would have handed Genevieve her own pillow for his further support; ‘this is delightful!’ reclining pathetically in his chair. ‘This is not like Traversham.’
‘Where they would not believe he was ill!’ said Sophy.
‘I hope he does not look so very ill,’ said Genevieve, cheerfully, but this rather hurt the feelings of both; the one said, ‘Oh! but he is terribly pale,’ the other coughed, and said, ‘Looks are deceitful.’
‘That is the very reason,’ said Genevieve. ‘You don’t look deceitful enough to be so ill—so ill as Miss Sophie fears; now you are at home, and well cared for, you will soon be well.’
‘Care would have prevented it all,’ said Sophy.
‘And not brought me home!’ said Gilbert. ‘Home is home on any terms. No one there had the least idea a fellow could ever be unwell or out of spirits!’
‘Ah! you must have been ill,’ cried his sister, ‘you who never used to be miserable!’
Gilbert gave a sigh. ‘They were such mere boys,’ he said.
‘Monsieur votre Precepteur?’ asked Genevieve.
‘Ah! he was otherwise occupied!’
‘There is some mystery beneath,’ said Genevieve, turning to Sophy, who exclaimed abruptly, ‘Oh! is he in love?’
‘Sophy goes to the point,’ said Gilbert, smiling, the picture of languid comfort; ‘but I own there are suspicious circumstances. He always has a photograph in his pocket, and Price has seen him looking at it.’
‘Ah! depend upon it, Miss Sophy, it is all a romance of these young gentlemen,’ said Genevieve, turning to her with a droll provoking air of confidence; ‘ce pauvre Monsieur had the portrait of his sister!’
‘Catch me carrying Sophy’s face in my waistcoat pocket, cried Gilbert, forgetting his languor.
‘Speak for yourself, Mr. Gilbert,’ laughed Genevieve.
