"I cannot conceive what you can find to amuse you morning after morning among my oaks and beeches," he exclaimed to Durnford. "You must be horribly hipped, and you will be glad to go back to London, I take it, even though the town must be almost empty of good company."

And now on this fair June morning, after taking his farewell of Irene, Herrick was surprised to see Lavendale riding along the avenue leading to the Manor House at an hour when that gentleman was generally lounging on a sofa, sipping his midday chocolate and dallying with the _Flying Post_ or _Read's Weekly Journal_.

"Why, Jack, what took your lordship out so early?" he asked, emerging from a by-path, and overtaking the sauntering horse.

"Business, Herrick, business, which means money. I have been with the village lawyer, who wrote to apprise me of an offer made by my neighbour, Mr. Bosworth, for a paddock or two adjoining his home farm--conterminous land, the fellow called it, all but worthless to me, he insinuated, and tried to make me believe it grows only docks, when it is to my knowledge as rich a pasture as any in Surrey, but to Mr.

Bosworth it would be useful, to complete his ring-fence. 'Hang his ring-fence!' says I; 'what is he that his estate should be made perfect to the detriment of mine? If he wants my meadow he will have to pay for it as if it were a gold-mine in Peru.' While I was talking in comes the Squire himself, and was vastly agreeable, professing himself charmed to renew my acquaintance after so many years. He remembered seeing me with my mother, he said, when I used to ride my pony beside her carriage, and when I was the prettiest little lad in the county. Curse his impudence for remembering me and my prettiness! And then he began to talk about the meadows. They make a little promontory or peninsula, it seems, that runs into his estate, which he has been extending on all sides ever since he owned it, and spoils the look of his territory on the map. I played him nicely, pretending to be the soul of good-nature, meaning to get a usurer's profit on my land if I consent to sell, and it ended in his asking me to dine with him to-day, and my accepting on condition that I take my friend with me. 'Where I go my friend Durnford must be made welcome,' says I. So you are booked, Herrick, for a bad dinner, since they all say that our neighbour is a skinflint."

Herrick flushed crimson with delight. To dine under the roof that sheltered her, to sit at meat with her perhaps, see her sweetly smiling at him on the other side of the board, his wood-nymph become mortal, and eating and drinking like mere vulgar clay!

"Why, Herrick, you look as pleased as if you were asked to a state dinner at Leicester House, or to hob and n.o.b with the chiefs of the Whig party! I thought you would be put out at having our London trip postponed for twenty-four hours."

"I have no pa.s.sion for the distractions of St. James's, where I always feel a fish out of water, and I have a certain curiosity about this Squire Bosworth, whom I take to be a character."

"How pat you have his name!"

"I have a good memory for names."

"Well, hold yourself in readiness, and put on your smartest suit. Squire Hunks dines at four. I fancy it will be a Barmecide feast, such as little Pope hits off in an unpublished lampoon upon certain kinsfolk of mine. But there is a daughter, it seems, and she is to sing to us after dinner."

"What, she sings!" cried Herrick, enraptured.

"Ay, she sings, man! Why should she not sing? Half the shes in England can pipe up some kind of strain, though with ten out of every dozen that which delights the performer excruciates her audience. But Miss Bosworth is an heiress, Herrick, and I mean to admire, screech she even more hoa.r.s.ely than our pied peac.o.c.ks yonder."

"You mean to court Miss Bosworth, perhaps?" said Herrick, drawing himself up stiffly.

"I mean to do as the whim seizes me--you know I was ever a creature of whim. 'Twas a whim lost me my true love Judith: and if a whim can catch me a pretty heiress, it will be but one sharp turn of fortune's wheel from despair to rapture."

"How do you know that she is pretty?" grumbled Herrick, racked with jealousy.

"I have ears, friend, and other men have tongues. 'Twas old Hunks's lawyer sang the praises of young Miss's beauty. She is lovely, it seems, and not an atom like her father, which would indeed have been an altogether impossible conjunction."

Herrick went back to the Manor with his bosom torn by conflicting emotions--fear lest his friend should turn into his rival, joy at the thought that he was to spend some blessed hours in his idol's company.

He felt as if he could hardly live till four o'clock, so fluttered was his heart with fond expectancy. He took out his best clothes and brushed them carefully, and sighed over their shabbiness. The suit of dove-coloured velvet, silver braided, and touched here and there with scarlet, had been a handsome suit enough more than a year ago in Vienna, where it was made: but it had pa.s.sed through many a rough night of pleasure, bore the stain of wine-splashes, and a burnt spot on one of the lapels from the ashes of somebody's pipe. It had the air of a coat that had lived hard, and seen bad company. Herrick flung it aside with an oath.

"I will not wear so debauched a garment," he cried; "my gray cloth coat is honest. I would rather look like a yeoman or a scrivener than like a broken-down rake."

"Why, Durnford, man, you are dressed worse than a Quaker!" exclaimed Lavendale, radiant in claret-coloured velvet coat and French-gray satin waistcoat and smalls.

"And you are vastly too smart for a country dinner-table," said Herrick.

"O, but one cannot be too fine when one is going courting. Young misses adore pretty colours and gay clothes. I think I see the motive of your sober gray. It is pure generosity, a sacrifice to friendship; you would let me dazzle without a rival."

"Dazzle to your heart's content; shine out, b.u.t.terfly. I thought a few weeks ago that you had a heart."

"You were wrong. I had a heart till Judith broke it. That was three years ago. Since she jilted me I have had nothing here but an insatiable pa.s.sion called vanity, always hungering for new conquests. I am like Alexander, and lament when a day has pa.s.sed without a victory. I pant to conquer the Squire's daughter. I can picture her, Herrick, a chubby-cheeked rustic beauty, all white muslin and blue ribbons."

The Lavendale coach had been ordered out to carry the two young men to Fairmile Court with all due ceremony.

"It smells as mouldy as a mausoleum," said his lordship, as he stepped into the carriage.

Fairmile Court had a less neglected and desolate aspect than it had worn fifteen years before, when the Squire adopted the vagrant's baby. The very presence of girlhood in the gray old house seemed to have brightened it. Mademoiselle Latour's influence had also been for good; governess and pupil had contrived to inspire the scanty household with a love of neatness and order; and their own deft hands had dusted and polished the quaint old furniture, and had filled great bowls of common garden flowers, and glorified the old fireplaces with beau-pots, and had worked wonders without spending an extra shilling of the Squire's beloved money. All this had been done without any resistance offered by Mrs. Barbara Layburne, who as long as she enjoyed substantial power, ruled over the store-closets and wine-cellars, paid tradesmen and servants, and regulated supplies of all kinds, cared not who beautified rooms which she never entered, or cultivated flowers which she never looked at. As the years went by, she had retired more and more within herself, spending her days in the solitude of that little wainscoted parlour which she had chosen for her retreat on her first coming to Fairmile. It was almost the smallest, and a.s.suredly the dismallest, room in the house, at the end of a long dark pa.s.sage, and overlooking the stable-yard. Here she lived apart from all the household, and with no companion save that old harpsichord which startled the stillness sometimes late in the evening, accompanying a contralto voice of exceptional power even in its decay. Those occasional strains of melody had a ghostlike sound to Irene's ear, and always saddened her. Indeed, Mrs. Barbara's personality had ever been one of the overshadowing influences of the girl's life. She shrank with an involuntary recoil from any intercourse with that strange wreck of the past. The pale stern face with its traces of lost beauty chilled her soul.

"I do not think you can be many years younger than Mrs. Layburne," the girl said to her governess one day.

"I doubt if she is not my junior by some years, pet."

"And yet you never give me the idea of being old, and she seems as if her youth and all its happiness must have come to an end a century ago."

"Ah, that is because my youth was a very calm and quiet business, Rena, while I doubt hers was full of incident and pa.s.sion. She is an extinct volcano, my dear. The fires were all burnt out years ago, and only the dark grim mountain remains, enclosing nothing but ashes and hollowness.

Such women are like corpses that walk about after the spirit has fled.

Mrs. Layburne must have ceased to live long ago."

The two gentlemen were ushered into a long, low drawing-room, oak-panelled and somewhat dark, the heavy mullioned windows being designed rather for ornament than light. Some of the furniture had been new when the house was new, other things were heirlooms from an older house, and a few trifles had been added in the tea-drinking reign of that good Queen and conscientious woman who had been translated from a troubled kingdom to a peaceful one just twelve years ago. There was a harpsichord at the further end of the room, and seated near it were two ladies who rose at the entrance of the visitors, while Squire Bosworth, who had been standing with his back to the flower-bedecked hearth, came over to receive them.

"Welcome to Fairmile Court, my Lord Lavendale; your servant, Mr.

Durnford," said Bosworth, as he shook hands with his guests; "my daughter, Miss Bosworth, Mademoiselle Latour."

The little old lady in gray satinet made a curtsy which bespoke Parisian elegance of the highest water, and to which Herrick responded with one of his French bows. Lavendale had eyes only for the heiress.

"Lovely as the lady in _Comus_," he said to himself, "and knows about as much of the world and its ways, I doubt. By Heaven, she is foredoomed as a prize to the boldest!"

Herrick and Irene greeted each other with a charming ceremony. Both being prepared, they acted their parts admirably.

"What do you think of him, Maman?" whispered the girl to her governess, when those two had retired from the masculine group.

"He has too much the look of a fine gentleman," answered Mademoiselle, with her eyes upon Lavendale, "and he carries his head with an invincible air which always makes me detest a man. Do you remember that story I told you of Lauzun, who married la grande Mademoiselle?--'_Louise de Bourbon, otez-moi mes bottes._' Does he not look just the kind of man to make a princess of the royal blood take his boots off, were she fool enough to marry him?"

"Why, Maman, he has a look of proud humility, but not a spark of vanity and foolishness. O, I see, you are looking at Lord Lavendale, in his velvet and satin. I was asking you about Mr. Durnford."

"Eh, child! what, the poor companion? Have you found time to spare _him_ a glance, when that irresistible fopling shines and sparkles there as if he would put the very sunshine out of countenance by his brilliancy?

Yes, the companion has an interesting face, very grave, yet there is a look about the corners of the mouth which bespeaks a cynical humour. He looks shabby beside his patron, and poor, and, as you say, pet, he has an air of proud humility which I rather like. It becomes a dependent to be proud."

"O, but he is no dependent. He is a writer; has written politics, and plays, and even verses," the girl answered eagerly.

"Why, child, when and where did you hear about him?"

"Dinner is served, sir," announced the old butler, whereby he unconsciously extricated Irene from a dilemma. Mademoiselle forgot the question she had asked before there was a chance of repeating it.

The dinner was much better than his lordship had antic.i.p.ated, for Squire Bosworth had sent his housekeeper peremptory orders that the meal should be as good a one as could be provided on such short notice, and Mrs.

Layburne knew him too well to disobey him. Rare old wines had been brought out of cobweb-festooned bins, and the good old strawberry-beds and raspberry-bushes had yielded their treasures for the dessert. Fish there was none attainable, but soup, and joints, and poultry were followed by a course of pastry and rich puddings, all in the abundant and solid fashion of the times.

Lavendale declared afterwards that he would have preferred the scantiness of Harpagon's table to this reeking profusion. "n.o.body knows how to feed upon this side of the Channel," he complained. "For a man of delicate appet.i.te, who can dine off the wing of a chicken and an olive or two, it is torture to be placed in front of a smoking sirloin, or to be asked to dive into the infinite capacities of a huge venison pie. I would rather sup on tripe or cow-heel with some of the wits and garretteers we know, than be sickened by the greasy abundance of a country gentleman's table."

But this grumbling came afterwards, and for talking's sake. Lavendale seemed very much in his element at the Squire's board, where he sat next the heiress, and talked to her of those London amus.e.m.e.nts of which she knew so little, even by hearsay.