"What do you mean?"

There was no change in Miss Arundel's voice when she spoke to her cousin; but there was a change, not easily to be defined, in her face when she looked at him. It seemed as if that weary hopelessness of expression which had settled on her countenance lately grew more weary, more hopeless, as she turned towards this bright young soldier, glorious in the beauty of his own light-heartedness. It may have been merely the sharpness of contrast which produced this effect. It may have been an actual change arising out of some secret hidden in Olivia's breast.

"What do you mean by an important mission, Edward?" she said.

She had need to repeat the question; for the young man's attention had wandered from her, and he was watching his horse as the animal cropped the tangled herbage about the Rectory gate.

"Why, I've come with an invitation to a dinner at Marchmont Towers.

There's to be a dinner-party; and, in point of fact, it's to be given on purpose for you and my uncle. John and Polly are full of it. You'll come, won't you, Livy?"

Miss Arundel shrugged her shoulders, with an impatient sigh.

"I hate dinner-parties," she said; "but, of course, if papa accepts Mr.

Marchmont's invitation, I cannot refuse to go. Papa must choose for himself."

There had been some interchange of civilities between Marchmont Towers and Swampington Rectory during the six weeks which had pa.s.sed since Mary's introduction to Olivia Arundel; and this dinner-party was the result of John's simple desire to do honour to his friend's kindred.

"Oh, you must come, Livy," Mr. Arundel exclaimed. "The tennis-court is going on capitally. I want you to give us your opinion again. Shall I take my horse round to the stables? I am going to stop an hour or two, and ride back by moonlight."

Edward Arundel took the bridle in his hand, and the cousins walked slowly round by the low garden-wall to a dismal and rather dilapidated stable-yard at the back of the Rectory, where Hubert Arundel kept a wall-eyed white horse, long-legged, shallow-chested, and large-headed, and a fearfully and wonderfully made phaeton, with high wheels and a mouldy leathern hood.

Olivia walked by the young soldier's side with that air of hopeless indifference that had so grown upon her very lately. Her eyelids drooped with a look of sullen disdain; but the grey eyes glanced furtively now and again at her companion's handsome face. He was very handsome. The glitter of reddish gold in his hair, and the light in his fearless blue eyes; the careless grace peculiar to the kind of man we call "a swell;" the gay _insouciance_ of an easy, candid, generous nature,--all combined to make Edward Arundel singularly attractive.

These spoiled children of nature demand our admiration, in very spite of ourselves. These beautiful, useless creatures call upon us to rejoice in their valueless beauty, like the flaunting poppies in the cornfield, and the gaudy wild-flowers in the gra.s.s.

The darkness of Olivia's face deepened after each furtive glance she cast at her cousin. Could it be that this girl, to whom nature had given strength but denied grace, envied the superficial attractions of the young man at her side? She did envy him; she envied him that sunny temperament which was so unlike her own; she envied him that wondrous power of taking life lightly. Why should existence be so bright and careless to him; while to her it was a terrible fever-dream, a long sickness, a never-ceasing battle?

"Is my uncle in the house?" Mr. Arundel asked, as he strolled from the stable into the garden with his cousin by his side.

"No; he has been out since dinner," Olivia answered; "but I expect him back every minute. I came out into the garden,--the house seemed so hot and stifling to-night, and I have been sitting in close cottages all day."

"Sitting in close cottages!" repeated Edward. "Ah, to be sure; visiting your rheumatic old pensioners, I suppose. How good you are, Olivia!"

"Good!"

She echoed the word in the very bitterness of a scorn that could not be repressed.

"Yes; everybody says so. The Millwards were at Marchmont Towers the other day, and they were talking of you, and praising your goodness, and speaking of your schools, and your blanket-a.s.sociations, and your invalid-societies, and your mutual-help clubs, and all your plans for the parish. Why, you must work as hard as a prime-minister, Livy, by their account; you, who are only a few years older than I."

Only a few years! She started at the phrase, and bit her lip.

"I was three-and-twenty last month," she said.

"Ah, yes; to be sure. And I'm one-and-twenty. Then you're only two years older than I, Livy. But, then, you see, you're so clever, that you seem much older than you are. You'd make a fellow feel rather afraid of you, you know. Upon my word you do, Livy."

Miss Arundel did not reply to this speech of her cousin's. She was walking by his side up and down a narrow gravelled pathway, bordered by a hazel-hedge; she had gathered one of the slender twigs, and was idly stripping away the fluffy buds.

"What do you think, Livy?" cried Edward suddenly, bursting out laughing at the end of the question. "What do you think? It's my belief you've made a conquest."

"What do you mean?"

"There you go; turning upon a fellow as if you could eat him. Yes, Livy; it's no use your looking savage. You've made a conquest; and of one of the best fellows in the world, too. John Marchmont's in love with you."

Olivia Arundel's face flushed a vivid crimson to the roots of her black hair.

"How dare you come here to insult me, Edward Arundel?" she cried pa.s.sionately.

"Insult you? Now, Livy dear, that's too bad, upon my word,"

remonstrated the young man. "I come and tell you that as good a man as ever breathed is over head and ears in love with you, and that you may be mistress of one of the finest estates in Lincolnshire if you please, and you turn round upon me like no end of furies."

"Because I hate to hear you talk nonsense," answered Olivia, her bosom still heaving with that first outburst of emotion, but her voice suppressed and cold. "Am I so beautiful, or so admired or beloved, that a man who has not seen me half a dozen times should fall in love with me? Do those who know me estimate me so much, or prize me so highly, that a stranger should think of me? You _do_ insult me, Edward Arundel, when you talk as you have talked to-night."

She looked out towards the low yellow light in the sky with a black gloom upon her face, which no reflected glimmer of the sinking sun could illumine; a settled darkness, near akin to the utter blackness of despair.

"But, good heavens, Olivia, what do you mean?" cried the young man. "I tell you something that I think a good joke, and you go and make a tragedy out of it. If I'd told Let.i.tia that a rich widower had fallen in love with her, she'd think it the finest fun in the world."

"I'm not your sister Let.i.tia."

"No; but I wish you'd half as good a temper as she has, Livy. However, never mind; I'll say no more. If poor old Marchmont has fallen in love with you, that's his look-out. Poor dear old boy, he's let out the secret of his weakness half a dozen ways within these last few days.

It's Miss Arundel this, and Miss Arundel the other; so unselfish, so accomplished, so ladylike, so good! That's the way he goes on, poor simple old dear; without having the remotest notion that he's making a confounded fool of himself."

Olivia tossed the rumpled hair from her forehead with an impatient gesture of her hand.

"Why should this Mr. Marchmont think all this of me?" she said, "when--" she stopped abruptly.

"When--what, Livy?"

"When other people don't think it."

"How do you know what other people think? You haven't asked them, I suppose?"

The young soldier treated his cousin in very much the same free-and-easy manner which he displayed towards his sister Let.i.tia. It would have been almost difficult for him to recognise any degree in his relationship to the two girls. He loved Let.i.tia better than Olivia; but his affection for both was of exactly the same character.

Hubert Arundel came into the garden, wearied out, like his daughter, while the two cousins were walking under the shadow of the neglected hazels. He declared his willingness to accept the invitation to Marchmont Towers, and promised to answer John's ceremonious note the next day.

"Cookson, from Kemberling, will be there, I suppose," he said, alluding to a brother parson, "and the usual set? Well, I'll come, Ned, if you wish it. You'd like to go, Olivia?"

"If you like, papa."

There was a duty to be performed now--the duty of placid obedience to her father; and Miss Arundel's manner changed from angry impatience to grave respect. She owed no special duty, be it remembered, to her cousin. She had no line or rule by which to measure her conduct to him.

She stood at the gate nearly an hour later, and watched the young man ride away in the dim moonlight. If every separate tramp of his horse's hoofs had struck upon her heart, it could scarcely have given her more pain than she felt as the sound of those slow footfalls died away in the distance.

"O my G.o.d," she cried, "is this madness to undo all that I have done?

Is this folly to be the climax of my dismal life? Am I to die for the love of a frivolous, fair-haired boy, who laughs in my face when he tells me that his friend has pleased to 'take a fancy to me'?"

She walked away towards the house; then stopping, with a sudden shiver, she turned, and went back to the hazel-alley she had paced with Edward Arundel.

"Oh, my narrow life!" she muttered between her set teeth; "my narrow life! It is that which has made me the slave of this madness. I love him because he is the brightest and fairest thing I have ever seen. I love him because he brings me all I have ever known of a more beautiful world than that I live in. Bah! why do I reason with myself?" she cried, with a sudden change of manner. "I love him because I am mad."