"We know that you did give him an answer, dearest; but gentlemen sometimes will not put up with one answer on such a subject. Lord Lufton has declared to Mark that he means to ask again. He has come down here on purpose to do so."

"And Lady Lufton--" said Lucy, speaking hardly above a whisper, and still hiding her face as she leaned against her sister's shoulder.

"Lord Lufton has not spoken to his mother about it," said Mark; and it immediately became clear to Lucy, from the tone of her brother's voice, that he, at least, would not be pleased, should she accept her lover's vow.

"You must decide out of your own heart, dear," said f.a.n.n.y, generously. "Mark and I know how well you have behaved, for I have told him everything." Lucy shuddered and leaned closer against her sister as this was said to her. "I had no alternative, dearest, but to tell him. It was best so; was it not? But nothing has been told to Lord Lufton. Mark would not let him come here to-day, because it would have flurried you, and he wished to give you time to think.

But you can see him to-morrow morning,--can you not? and then answer him."

Lucy now stood perfectly silent, feeling that she dearly loved her sister-in-law for her sisterly kindness--for that sisterly wish to promote a sister's love; but still there was in her mind a strong resolve not to allow Lord Lufton to come there under the idea that he would be received as a favoured lover. Her love was powerful, but so also was her pride; and she could not bring herself to bear the scorn which would lay in Lady Lufton's eyes. "His mother will despise me, and then he will despise me too," she said to herself; and with a strong gulp of disappointed love and ambition she determined to persist.

"Shall we leave you now, dear; and speak of it again to-morrow morning, before he comes?" said f.a.n.n.y.

"That will be the best," said Mark. "Turn it in your mind every way to-night. Think of it when you have said your prayers--and, Lucy, come here to me;"--then, taking her in his arms, he kissed her with a tenderness that was not customary with him towards her. "It is fair,"

said he, "that I should tell you this: that I have perfect confidence in your judgment and feeling; and that I will stand by you as your brother in whatever decision you may come to. f.a.n.n.y and I both think that you have behaved excellently, and are both of us sure that you will do what is best. Whatever you do I will stick to you;--and so will f.a.n.n.y."

"Dearest, dearest Mark!"

"And now we will say nothing more about it till to-morrow morning,"

said f.a.n.n.y.

But Lucy felt that this saying nothing more about it till to-morrow morning would be tantamount to an acceptance on her part of Lord Lufton's offer. Mrs. Robarts knew, and Mr. Robarts also now knew, the secret of her heart; and if, such being the case, she allowed Lord Lufton to come there with the acknowledged purpose of pleading his own suit, it would be impossible for her not to yield. If she were resolved that she would not yield, now was the time for her to stand her ground and make her fight.

"Do not go, f.a.n.n.y; at least not quite yet," she said.

"Well, dear?"

"I want you to stay while I tell Mark. He must not let Lord Lufton come here to-morrow."

"Not let him!" said Mrs. Robarts.

Mr. Robarts said nothing, but he felt that his sister was rising in his esteem from minute to minute.

"No; Mark must bid him not come. He will not wish to pain me when it can do no good. Look here, Mark;" and she walked over to her brother, and put both her hands upon his arm. "I do love Lord Lufton. I had no such meaning or thought when I first knew him. But I do love him--I love him dearly;--almost as well as f.a.n.n.y loves you, I suppose. You may tell him so if you think proper--nay, you must tell him so, or he will not understand me. But tell him this, as coming from me: that I will never marry him, unless his mother asks me."

"She will not do that, I fear," said Mark, sorrowfully.

"No; I suppose not," said Lucy, now regaining all her courage.

"If I thought it probable that she should wish me to be her daughter-in-law, it would not be necessary that I should make such a stipulation. It is because she will not wish it; because she would regard me as unfit to--to--to mate with her son. She would hate me, and scorn me; and then he would begin to scorn me, and perhaps would cease to love me. I could not bear her eye upon me, if she thought that I had injured her son. Mark, you will go to him now; will you not? and explain this to him;--as much of it as is necessary. Tell him, that if his mother asks me I will--consent. But that as I know that she never will, he is to look upon all that he has said as forgotten. With me it shall be the same as though it were forgotten."

Such was her verdict, and so confident were they both of her firmness--of her obstinacy Mark would have called it on any other occasion,--that they, neither of them, sought to make her alter it.

"You will go to him now,--this afternoon; will you not?" she said; and Mark promised that he would. He could not but feel that he himself was greatly relieved. Lady Lufton might probably hear that her son had been fool enough to fall in love with the parson's sister, but under existing circ.u.mstances she could not consider herself aggrieved either by the parson or by his sister. Lucy was behaving well, and Mark was proud of her. Lucy was behaving with fierce spirit, and f.a.n.n.y was grieving for her.

"I'd rather be by myself till dinner-time," said Lucy, as Mrs.

Robarts prepared to go with her out of the room. "Dear f.a.n.n.y, don't look unhappy; there's nothing to make us unhappy. I told you I should want goat's milk, and that will be all."

Robarts, after sitting for an hour with his wife, did return again to Framley Court; and, after a considerable search, found Lord Lufton returning home to a late dinner.

"Unless my mother asks her," said he, when the story had been told him. "That is nonsense. Surely you told her that such is not the way of the world."

Robarts endeavoured to explain to him that Lucy could not endure to think that her husband's mother should look on her with disfavour.

"Does she think that my mother dislikes her--her specially?" asked Lord Lufton.

No; Robarts could not suppose that that was the case; but Lady Lufton might probably think that a marriage with a clergyman's sister would be a mesalliance.

"That is out of the question," said Lord Lufton; "as she has especially wanted me to marry a clergyman's daughter for some time past. But, Mark, it is absurd talking about my mother. A man in these days is not to marry as his mother bids him."

Mark could only a.s.sure him, in answer to all this, that Lucy was very firm in what she was doing, that she had quite made up her mind, and that she altogether absolved Lord Lufton from any necessity to speak to his mother, if he did not think well of doing so. But all this was to very little purpose.

"She does love me then?" said Lord Lufton.

"Well," said Mark, "I will not say whether she does or does not. I can only repeat her own message. She cannot accept you, unless she does so at your mother's request." And having said that again, he took his leave, and went back to the parsonage.

Poor Lucy, having finished her interview with so much dignity, having fully satisfied her brother, and declined any immediate consolation from her sister-in-law, betook herself to her own bed-room. She had to think over what she had said and done, and it was necessary that she should be alone to do so. It might be that, when she came to reconsider the matter, she would not be quite so well satisfied as was her brother. Her grandeur of demeanour and slow propriety of carriage lasted her till she was well into her own room. There are animals who, when they are ailing in any way, contrive to hide themselves, ashamed, as it were, that the weakness of their suffering should be witnessed. Indeed, I am not sure whether all dumb animals do not do so more or less; and in this respect Lucy was like a dumb animal. Even in her confidences with f.a.n.n.y she made a joke of her own misfortunes, and spoke of her heart ailments with self-ridicule. But now, having walked up the staircase with no hurried step, and having deliberately locked the door, she turned herself round to suffer in silence and solitude--as do the beasts and birds.

She sat herself down on a low chair, which stood at the foot of her bed, and, throwing back her head, held her handkerchief across her eyes and forehead, holding it tight in both her hands; and then she began to think. She began to think and also to cry, for the tears came running down from beneath the handkerchief; and low sobs were to be heard,--only that the animal had taken itself off, to suffer in solitude.

Had she not thrown from her all her chances of happiness? Was it possible that he should come to her yet again,--a third time? No; it was not possible. The very mode and pride of this, her second rejection of him, made it impossible. In coming to her determination, and making her avowal, she had been actuated by the knowledge that Lady Lufton would regard such a marriage with abhorrence. Lady Lufton would not and could not ask her to condescend to be her son's bride.

Her chance of happiness, of glory, of ambition, of love, was all gone. She had sacrificed everything, not to virtue, but to pride; and she had sacrificed not only herself, but him. When first he came there--when she had meditated over his first visit--she had hardly given him credit for deep love; but now--there could be no doubt that he loved her now. After his season in London, his days and nights pa.s.sed with all that was beautiful, he had returned there, to that little country parsonage, that he might again throw himself at her feet. And she--she had refused to see him, though she loved him with all her heart; she had refused to see him, because she was so vile a coward that she could not bear the sour looks of an old woman!

"I will come down directly," she said, when f.a.n.n.y at last knocked at the door, begging to be admitted. "I won't open it, love, but I will be with you in ten minutes; I will, indeed." And so she was; not, perhaps, without traces of tears, discernible by the experienced eye of Mrs. Robarts, but yet with a smooth brow, and voice under her own command.

"I wonder whether she really loves him," Mark said to his wife that night.

"Love him!" his wife had answered; "indeed she does; and, Mark, do not be led away by the stern quiet of her demeanour. To my thinking she is a girl who might almost die for love."

On the next day Lord Lufton left Framley; and started, according to his arrangements, for the Norway salmon fishing.

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

THE GOAT AND COMPa.s.sES.

Harold Smith had been made unhappy by that rumour of a dissolution; but the misfortune to him would be as nothing compared to the severity with which it would fall on Mr. Sowerby. Harold Smith might or might not lose his borough, but Mr. Sowerby would undoubtedly lose his county; and, in losing that, he would lose everything. He felt very certain now that the duke would not support him again, let who would be master of Chaldicotes; and as he reflected on these things he found it very hard to keep up his spirits.

Tom Towers, it seems, had known all about it, as he always does. The little remark which had dropped from him at Miss Dunstable's, made, no doubt, after mature deliberation, and with profound political motives, was the forerunner, only by twelve hours, of a very general report that the giants were going to the country. It was manifest that the giants had not a majority in Parliament, generous as had been the promises of support disinterestedly made to them by the G.o.ds. This indeed was manifest, and therefore they were going to the country, although they had been deliberately warned by a very prominent scion of Olympus that if they did do so that disinterested support must be withdrawn. This threat did not seem to weigh much, and by two o'clock on the day following Miss Dunstable's party, the fiat was presumed to have gone forth. The rumour had begun with Tom Towers, but by that time it had reached Buggins at the Petty Bag Office.

"It won't make no difference to hus, sir; will it, Mr. Robarts?" said Buggins, as he leaned respectfully against the wall near the door, in the room of the private secretary at that establishment.

A good deal of conversation, miscellaneous, special, and political, went on between young Robarts and Buggins in the course of the day; as was natural, seeing that they were thrown in these evil times very much upon each other. The Lord Petty Bag of the present ministry was not such a one as Harold Smith. He was a giant indifferent to his private notes, and careless as to the duties even of patronage; he rarely visited the office, and as there were no other clerks in the establishment--owing to a root and branch reform carried out in the short reign of Harold Smith--to whom could young Robarts talk, if not to Buggins?

"No; I suppose not," said Robarts, as he completed on his blotting-paper an elaborate picture of a Turk seated on his divan.

"'Cause, you see, sir, we're in the Upper 'Ouse, now;--as I always thinks we hought to be. I don't think it ain't const.i.tutional for the Petty Bag to be in the Commons, Mr. Robarts. Hany ways, it never usen't."