"I'll take you!" said Hugh, picturing to himself all the pleasures of such a tour together over the Alps.

"No you won't, because that would be improper. When we travel together we must go Darby and Joan fashion, as man and wife. I think I had better go back to Emily, because her position there is so terrible. There must come some end to it, I suppose soon. He will be better, or he will become so bad that,--that medical interference will be unavoidable. But I do not like that she should be alone. She gave me a home when she had one;--and I must always remember that I met you there." After this there was of course another attempt with Hugh's right arm, which on this occasion was not altogether unsuccessful. And then she told him of her friendship for Mr.

Glasc.o.c.k's wife, and of her intention at some future time to visit them at Monkhams.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I must always remember that I met you there."]

"And see all the glories that might have been your own," he said.

"And think of the young man who has robbed me of them all! And you are to go there too, so that you may see what you have done. There was a time, Hugh, when I was very nearly pleasing all my friends and shewing myself to be a young lady of high taste and n.o.ble fortune,--and an obedient, good girl."

"And why didn't you?"

"I thought I would wait just a little longer.

Because,--because,--because--. Oh, Hugh, how cross you were to me afterwards when you came down to Nuncombe and would hardly speak to me!"

"And why didn't I speak to you?"

"I don't know. Because you were cross, and surly, and thinking of nothing but your tobacco, I believe. Do you remember how we walked to Niddon, and you hadn't a word for anybody?"

"I remember I wanted you to go down to the river with me, and you wouldn't go."

"You asked me only once, and I did so long to go with you. Do you remember the rocks in the river? I remember the place as though I saw it now; and how I longed to jump from one stone to another. Hugh, if we are ever married, you must take me there, and let me jump on those stones."

"You pretended that you could not think of wetting your feet."

"Of course I pretended,--because you were so cross, and so cold. Oh, dear! I wonder whether you will ever know it all."

"Don't I know it all now?"

"I suppose you do, nearly. There is mighty little of a secret in it, and it is the same thing that is going on always. Only it seems so strange to me that I should ever have loved any one so dearly,--and that for next to no reason at all. You never made yourself very charming that I know of;--did you?"

"I did my best. It wasn't much, I dare say."

"You did nothing, sir,--except just let me fall in love with you. And you were not quite sure that you would let me do that."

"Nora, I don't think you do understand."

"I do;--perfectly. Why were you cross with me, instead of saying one nice word when you were down at Nuncombe? I do understand."

"Why was it?"

"Because you did not think well enough of me to believe that I would give myself to a man who had no fortune of his own. I know it now, and I knew it then; and therefore I wouldn't dabble in the river with you. But it's all over now, and we'll go and get wet together like dear little children, and Priscilla shall scold us when we come back."

They were alone in the sitting-room for more than an hour, and Lady Rowley was patient up-stairs as mothers will be patient in such emergencies. Sophie and Lucy had gone out and left her; and there she remained telling herself, as the weary minutes went by, that as the thing was to be, it was well that the young people should be together. Hugh Stanbury could never be to her what Mr. Glasc.o.c.k would have been,--a son-in-law to sit and think about, and dream of, and be proud of,--whose existence as her son-in-law would in itself have been a happiness to her out in her banishment at the other side of the world; but nevertheless it was natural to her, as a soft-hearted loving mother with many daughters, that any son-in-law should be dear to her. Now that she had gradually brought herself round to believe in Nora's marriage, she was disposed to make the best of Hugh, to remember that he was certainly a clever man, that he was an honest fellow, and that she had heard of him as a good son and a kind brother, and that he had behaved well in reference to her Emily and Trevelyan. She was quite willing now that Hugh should be happy, and she sat there thinking that the time was very long, but still waiting patiently till she should be summoned. "You must let me go for mamma for a moment," Nora said. "I want you to see her and make yourself a good boy before her. If you are ever to be her son-in-law, you ought to be in her good graces." Hugh declared that he would do his best, and Nora fetched her mother.

Stanbury found some difficulty in making himself a "good boy" in Lady Rowley's presence; and Lady Rowley herself, for some time, felt very strongly the awkwardness of the meeting. She had never formally recognised the young man as her daughter's accepted suitor, and was not yet justified in doing so by any permission from Sir Marmaduke; but, as the young people had been for the last hour or two alone together, with her connivance and sanction, it was indispensable that she should in some way signify her parental adherence to the arrangement. Nora began by talking about Emily, and Trevelyan's condition and mode of living were discussed. Then Lady Rowley said something about their coming journey, and Hugh, with a lucky blunder, spoke of Nora's intended return to Italy. "We don't know how that may be," said Lady Rowley. "Her papa still wishes her to go back with us."

"Mamma, you know that that is impossible," said Nora.

"Not impossible, my love."

"But she will not go back," said Hugh. "Lady Rowley, you would not propose to separate us by such a distance as that?"

"It is Sir Marmaduke that you must ask."

"Mamma, mamma!" exclaimed Nora, rushing to her mother's side, "it is not papa that we must ask,--not now. We want you to be our friend.

Don't we, Hugh? And, mamma, if you will really be our friend, of course, papa will come round."

"My dear Nora!"

"You know he will, mamma; and you know that you mean to be good and kind to us. Of course I can't go back to the Islands with you. How could I go so far and leave him behind? He might have half-a-dozen wives before I could get back to him--"

"If you have not more trust in him than that--!"

"Long engagements are awful bores," said Hugh, finding it to be necessary that he also should press forward his argument.

"I can trust him as far as I can see him," said Nora, "and therefore I do not want to lose sight of him altogether."

Lady Rowley of course gave way and embraced her accepted son-in-law.

After all it might have been worse. He saw his way clearly, he said, to making six hundred a year, and did not at all doubt that before long he would do better than that. He proposed that they should be married some time in the autumn, but was willing to acknowledge that much must depend on the position of Trevelyan and his wife. He would hold himself ready at any moment, he said, to start to Italy, and would do all that could be done by a brother. Then Lady Rowley gave him her blessing, and kissed him again,--and Nora kissed him too, and hung upon him, and did not push him away at all when his arm crept round her waist. And that feeling came upon him which must surely be acknowledged by all engaged young men when they first find themselves encouraged by mammas in the taking of liberties which they have hitherto regarded as mysteries to be hidden, especially from maternal eyes,--that feeling of being a fine fat calf decked out with ribbons for a sacrifice.

CHAPTER XCI.

FOUR O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING.

Another week went by and Sir Marmaduke had even yet not surrendered.

He quite understood that Nora was not to go back to the Islands.

And he had visited Mr. and Mrs. Outhouse at St. Diddulph's in order to secure a home for her there, if it might be possible. Mr. Outhouse did not refuse, but gave the permission in such a fashion as to make it almost equal to a refusal. "He was," he said, "much attached to his niece Nora, but he had heard that there was a love affair." Sir Marmaduke, of course, could not deny the love affair. There was certainly a love affair of which he did not personally approve, as the gentleman had no fixed income and as far as he could understand no fixed profession. "Such a love affair," thought Mr. Outhouse, "was a sort of thing that he didn't know how to manage at all. If Nora came to him, was the young man to visit at the house, or was he not?" Then Mrs. Outhouse said something as to the necessity of an anti-Stanbury pledge on Nora's part, and Sir Marmaduke found that that scheme must be abandoned. Mrs. Trevelyan had written from Florence more than once or twice, and in her last letter had said that she would prefer not to have Nora with her. She was at that time living in lodgings at Siena and had her boy there also. She saw her husband every other day; but nevertheless,--according to her statements,--her visits to Casalunga were made in opposition to his wishes. He had even expressed a desire that she should leave Siena and return to England. He had once gone so far as to say that if she would do so, he would follow her. But she clearly did not believe him, and in all her letters spoke of him as one whom she could not regard as being under the guidance of reason. She had taken her child with her once or twice to the house, and on the first occasion Trevelyan had made much of his son, had wept over him, and professed that in losing him he had lost his only treasure; but after that he had not noticed the boy, and latterly she had gone alone. She thought that perhaps her visits cheered him, breaking the intensity of his solitude; but he never expressed himself gratified by them, never asked her to remain at the house, never returned with her into Siena, and continually spoke of her return to England as a step which must be taken soon,--and the sooner the better. He intended to follow her, he said; and she explained very fully how manifest was his wish that she should go, by the temptation to do so which he thought that he held out by this promise. He had spoken, on every occasion of her presence with him, of Sir Marmaduke's attempt to prove him to be a madman; but declared that he was afraid of no one in England, and would face all the lawyers in Chancery Lane and all the doctors in Savile Row. Nevertheless, so said Mrs. Trevelyan, he would undoubtedly remain at Casalunga till after Sir Marmaduke should have sailed. He was not so mad but that he knew that no one else would be so keen to take steps against him as would Sir Marmaduke. As for his health, her account of him was very sad. "He seemed," she said, "to be withering away." His hand was mere skin and bone. His hair and beard so covered his thin long cheeks, that there was nothing left of his face but his bright, large, melancholy eyes. His legs had become so frail and weak that they would hardly bear his weight as he walked; and his clothes, though he had taken a fancy to throw aside all that he had brought with him from England, hung so loose about him that they seemed as though they would fall from him. Once she had ventured to send out to him from Siena a doctor to whom she had been recommended in Florence; but he had taken the visit in very bad part, had told the gentleman that he had no need for any medical services, and had been furious with her, because of her offence in having sent such a visitor. He had told her that if ever she ventured to take such a liberty again, he would demand the child back, and refuse her permission inside the gates of Casalunga. "Don't come, at any rate, till I send for you," Mrs. Trevelyan said in her last letter to her sister. "Your being here would do no good, and would, I think, make him feel that he was being watched. My hope is, at last, to get him to return with me. If you were here, I think this would be less likely. And then why should you be mixed up with such unutterable sadness and distress more than is essentially necessary? My health stands wonderfully well, though the heat here is very great. It is cooler at Casalunga than in the town,--of which I am glad for his sake. He perspires so profusely that it seems to me he cannot stand the waste much longer. I know he will not go to England as long as papa is there;--but I hope that he may be induced to do so by slow stages as soon as he knows that papa has gone. Mind you send me a newspaper, so that he may see it stated in print that papa has sailed."

It followed as one consequence of these letters from Florence that Nora was debarred from the Italian scheme as a mode of pa.s.sing her time till some house should be open for her reception. She had suggested to Hugh that she might go for a few weeks to Nuncombe Putney, but he had explained to her the nature of his mother's cottage, and had told her that there was no hole there in which she could lay her head. "There never was such a forlorn young woman,"

she said. "When papa goes I shall literally be without shelter."

There had come a letter from Mrs. Glasc.o.c.k,--at least it was signed Caroline Glasc.o.c.k, though another name might have been used,--dated from Milan, saying that they were hurrying back to Naples even at that season of the year, because Lord Peterborough was dead. "And she is Lady Peterborough!" said Lady Rowley, unable to repress the expression of the old regrets. "Of course she is Lady Peterborough, mamma; what else should she be?--though she does not so sign herself." "We think," said the American peeress, "that we shall be at Monkhams before the end of August, and Charles says that you are to come just the same. There will be n.o.body else there, of course, because of Lord Peterborough's death." "I saw it in the paper," said Sir Marmaduke, "and quite forgot to mention it."

That same evening there was a long family discussion about Nora's prospects. They were all together in the gloomy sitting-room at Gregg's Hotel, and Sir Marmaduke had not yielded. The ladies had begun to feel that it would be well not to press him to yield.

Practically he had yielded. There was now no question of cursing and of so-called disinheritance. Nora was to remain in England, of course with the intention of being married to Hugh Stanbury; and the difficulty consisted in the need of an immediate home for her. It wanted now but twelve days to that on which the family were to sail from Southampton, and nothing had been settled. "If papa will allow me something ever so small, and will trust me, I will live alone in lodgings," said Nora.

"It is the maddest thing I ever heard," said Sir Marmaduke.

"Who would take care of you, Nora?" asked Lady Rowley.

"And who would walk about with you?" said Lucy.

"I don't see how it would be possible to live alone like that," said Sophie.