And ye shall walk in silk attire, And siller hae to spare, Gin ye'll consent to be his bride, Nor think of Donald mair.

Miss BLAMIRE.

What makes you so lame to-day?' asked Lord Ormersfield, as Louis crossed the library, on returning from an interview to which he had been summoned in another room.

'I only stumbled over an obstruction on the Frost staircase yesterday,'

said Louis. 'Poor Jem chose to have me up to the nursery; and to see him in the paternal character is the funniest as well as the pleasantest spectacle the house affords.'

'Ah! it is not what it was,' said the Earl. 'I suppose I must call there before the holidays, though,' he added, reluctantly. 'But what did that man, Ramsbotham, want with you?'

'To ask our interest for that appointment for his friend Grant.'

'Indeed! what could bring him here?'

'Why, unluckily, he fancied he had some claim on me, on the score of Jem Frost's election. I was too innocent then to know what those things go for.'

'You may say so!' e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the Earl. 'So he was insolent enough to bring that up, was he?'

'Worse,' said Fitzjocelyn; 'he wanted to threaten that, unless I would oblige him now, there were matters which it was his duty to lay before the trustees. I told him he would do, of course, whatever was his duty; whereupon he thought my Lordship was interested in Mr. Frost.'

'Intolerably impertinent! I hope you set him down!'

'I told him that neither Mr. Frost nor I should wish him to pretermit his duty on any consideration whatever. Then he harked back to what he did for us at the election; and I was forced to tell him that if he considered that he had thereby established a claim on me, I must own myself in his debt; but as to reciprocating it, by putting in a person like Grant, that was against my conscience. He flew into a pa.s.sion, informed me that Mr. Frost would take the consequences, mounted the British Lion, and I bowed him out upon that majestic quadruped, talking grandly of illiberal prejudices and the rising generation.'

'You acknowledged that he had a claim on you?'

'As things go in this world, I suppose it is true.'

'Louis! you will never know how to deal with those people.'

'I am afraid not. I could not, either boldly or diplomatically, get rid of the charge; so there was nothing for it but to confess. That's not the worst of it. I am afraid he really will be able to take revenge on poor Jem, and I'm sure he can't afford to lose any more scholars.'

'Such a fellow as that will not have much in his power against James,'

said Lord Ormersfield. 'What I am afraid of is, that you have cut the ground from under your feet. I cannot see how you are ever to stand for Northwold.'

'Nor I,' said Louis. 'In fact, father, I have always thought it most wonderfully kind forbearance that you never reproached me more for my doings on that occasion. I believe we were all too happy,' he presently added, with a sigh, which was re-echoed by his father, at the same time trying to say something about youthfulness, to which Louis, who had been leaning thoughtfully on the mantelpiece, presently answered--'How much wiser old people are than young! An original axiom, is not it? but it is the last which one learns!'

'You would hardly act in the same way now?' said his father.

'I wonder when it ever answers to interfere with the natural course of events!' responded Louis, musingly. 'There were two things that Mr.

Calcott told me once upon a time.' Those two things he left unuttered.

They were--that the gentleman would be wasted on the school, and that the lady was not made for a poor man's wife. No wonder they made him sigh, but he concluded by exclaiming aloud--

'Well, I hope they will both go to Estminster, and come back with fresh life!'

The Estminster invitation was already on the road; but, unfortunately, Lady Conway had been unable to secure lodgings large enough to receive the children. She was urgent, however, that Isabel should come as soon as possible, since Louisa had been more unwell than usual, and was pining for her eldest sister; and she hoped that James would join her there as soon as the holidays should set him free.

James was hurt to find Isabel so much delighted to go, but resolved that she should not be deprived of the pleasure, and petulantly denied the offers, which became even entreaties, that she might wait till he could accompany her. He arranged, therefore, that he should follow her in a fortnight's time, the Miss Faithfulls undertaking the charge of their small namesakes; and Lady Conway wrote to fix a day when Delaford should come to take care of Isabel on her journey.

James and Isabel laughed at this measure. Mrs. James Frost was certainly not in circ.u.mstances to carry such a hero of the b.u.t.tery in her suite; and Lady Conway herself had more sense than to have proposed it, but for Delaford's own representations. In fact, there was a pretty face at Dynevor Terrace, and he had been piqued enough by the return of his letters to be resolved on re-establishing his influence.

Therefore did he demonstrate to my Lady that the only appropriate trains would bring him to Northwold at seven in the evening, and take him and Mrs. James Frost Dynevor away at eleven next morning; and therefore did Isabel look up in a sudden fit of recollection, as the breakfast was being removed, and say, 'Charlotte, Delaford is coming on Tuesday to fetch me to Estminster, and will sleep here that night.'

Isabel little guessed that in the days when she viewed the fantastic Viscount as her greatest enemy, the announcement of his approach would have been far less appalling to her.

'The wretch! the traitor! the vile deceiver!' thought Charlotte, not chary of her epithets, and almost ready to wreak her vengeance on the silver spoons. 'He has gone and broken poor Marianne's heart, and now he wants to treat me the same, and make me faithless to poor Tom, that is up in the mountain-tops and trusts to me! O me, what shall I do?

Mrs. Beckett is gone, and there's no one to give me an advice! If I speak to him or scorn him, he'll take his advantage all alike--and his words are so fine and so soft, that do what I will to hate him when I'm away, he is sure to wind round me when he's there; and I can't get away, and I'm a poor, lonely, fatherless and motherless orphan, and a vain girl, that has listened already to his treacherous suit more than poor Tom would think for.'

Charlotte worked on in much grief and perplexity for some minutes, revolving the vanity that had led to her follies, and humbling herself in her own eyes. Suddenly, a flash of thought crossed her, and woke a smile upon her face, almost a look of mischief. She tied on a clean ap.r.o.n, and running upstairs, opened the drawing-room door, and said, 'If you please, ma'am, might I ask Miss Faithfull's Martha to tea on Tuesday night?'

'Oh yes, if you like,' said Isabel, never raising her eyes from the rebuilding of the ruined chapel in the valley.

Away skipped Charlotte, and in two minutes was at the back door of the House Beautiful. Mrs. Martha had been grimly kind to her ever since she had been afflicted with the cook for a fellow-servant, and received her only with a reproof for coming gadding out, when she ought to be hard at work; but when she heard the invitation, she became wrathful--she had rather go ten miles out of her way than even look at 'that there Ford.'

But Charlotte explained her purpose, and implored, and put her in mind that Mrs. Beckett was gone, and she had no protector; and Martha relented, told her that if she had minded her she would never have been in the sc.r.a.pe at all, but agreed, not without satisfaction, to afford Mr. Delaford the society of his old acquaintance.

And so when Mr. Delaford, with his whiskers freshly curled and his boots in a state of fascinating polish, walked up Dynevor Terrace, the door was opened by Ellen, and the red-faced cook and the upright Mrs.

Martha sat on either side the fire. Daintily did he greet them, and stand warming himself before the fire, adapting his conversation to them for the next ten minutes, before he ventured to ask whether Miss Arnold were still an inmate. 'Taking out dinner--taking in tea,'

gruffly replied Martha.

Mr. Delaford waited, but Ellen only ran in for one moment to fetch the kettle, and Martha discoursed as usual on the gold mines in Peru.

By-and-by, when the parlour tea could by no possibility be supposed to be farther prolonged, there swept into the kitchen the stately nurse.

Charlotte had run up to the nursery, and begged as a favour that she might be left to watch the children, while Mrs. Nurse entertained Mr.

Delaford below-stairs; and in pity to so grand a gentleman, constrained to mix with such 'low servants,' the nurse had yielded, and Charlotte sat safe and sound by the nursery fire, smiling at his discomfiture, and reading over Tom's letters with an easier conscience than for many a day.

Mr. Delaford was too much of a gentleman to be uncivil to the three dames by the kitchen fire, but he watched every step and every creaking door. He even went the length of coming up to family prayers, in hopes of there meeting Charlotte; but she only joined the procession at the parlour door, and had flown upstairs, like a little bird, before he was out again.

The gentleman was affronted, and resolved to make her feel it. They could not but meet at the kitchen breakfast, and he barely acknowledged her. This was the most trying stroke of all, for it set her, in the eyes of the cook and nurse, on a level with the inferior servants, to whom he would not have deigned a look, and it was not easy to resist showing that she was on more familiar terms with him than all. But the instinct of self-protection and the wisdom of sincerity came to her aid. She abstained from raising her eyes to his face, from one conscious word or glance; she locked herself into her pantry when she took down the breakfast-things, and avoided every encounter, even when she had begun to feel that it would have been more flattering had he made more efforts. At last, dire necessity obliged her to accept his aid in carrying her mistress's box down the stairs. He walked backwards, she forwards. She would not meet his eye, and he was too well-bred for one word on the stairs; but in the garden he exclaimed, 'Miss Arnold, what have I done?'

'I never ought to have listened to you,' said Charlotte. 'It was not right by neither of us; so please say no more.'

'If you could understand--'

'I don't want to understand nothing.'

Charlotte drove him on with the box till they were close to the fly, and then, leaving him and the man to adjust the packing, flew back to announce that all was ready for her mistress. The last kisses were given to the children, and a message left with Charlotte for her master, who was in school; then she stood with Miss Catharine in her arms, and saw the fly drive off.

'Well,' said Mrs. Cook, 'that butler thinks himself a great beau, no doubt! I asked him whether he thought you pretty, Charlotte, and he said you hadn't no air nor no complexion. It's as I tells you--n.o.body will never take no notice of you while you goes about so dowdy.'

Charlotte did not know whether she was glad that the cook could not tease her about Delaford, or mortified to be supposed beneath his notice. No air, forsooth! She who had often heard it said that she looked like any lady!

'But oh,' said Charlotte to herself, as she spent her daily five minutes at noonday in quiet thought, 'am I not a poor silly thing not to be thankful that care has been round me this time, and that I have not been let to do nothing giddy nor false by Tom, whatever I may have thought!'

Meanwhile, Isabel had found it much harder to part with her babies for three weeks than it had seemed at the first proposal; and there were tears in her eyes as she gazed at the peaked, red-tiled roof of the old grammar-school, and reckoned the days and hours before her husband would join her.

Other a.s.sociations revived when she found herself at Estminster, and was received with shrieks of joy, caresses, and exclamations too fond and foolish to bear repet.i.tion; and then the pale Louisa rested against her, stroking her hand, and Lady Conway fondled her, and Virginia, looking formed and handsome, retreated a little way to study her and declare that she was the same Isabel, neither altered nor grown older--it was all a dream that she had ever left them.

She almost felt it so herself, so entirely did she fit into the old habits, the little quiet dinner (only it seemed unusually good), the subsequent closing round the fire with the addition of Miss King and Louisa, the easy desultory chat, the books with Mudie's stamp lying about, the music which must be practised. It was very like being Miss Conway still; and when she awoke the next morning to find it late, and to the impulse of hurrying up, or _not_ hurrying, expecting to find James making breakfast himself, and cross at being made late for school, she turned on her pillow, half doubting whether she had dreamt these two years in one long night, and remembering that captive mermaid, who had but to resume her maritime headgear and return to her native element, to forget the very existence of her fisherman husband and children. No! Isabel was not come to that! but she was almost ashamed to enjoy her extra hour's repose; and then the leisurely breakfast--nay, even the hot rolls and clear coffee were appreciated; and she sighed as she called up the image of the breakfast over an hour ago, the grim kettle, the bad b.u.t.ter, the worse fire, and James, cold and hurried, with Kitty on his knee gnawing a lump of crust. It was a contrast to Lady Conway reading her letters and discussing engagements with comfortable complacency, and Virginia making suggestions, and Louisa's grave bright eyes consulting hers, and Miss King quietly putting in a remark, and the antic.i.p.ation of Walter's return, as if he were the only person wanting.