"I am so glad," she said, squeezing Christabel's hand, during an inspection of the hot-houses. "I like him so much."

"I don't quite understand," replied Christabel, with a freezing look: "who is it whom you like? The new Curate?"

"No dear, don't pretend to misunderstand me. I am so pleased to think that you and your cousin are going to make a match of it. He is so handsome--such a fine, frank, open-hearted manner--so altogether nice."

"I am pleased to hear you praise him," said Christabel, still supremely cold; "but my cousin is my cousin, and will never be anything more."

"You don't mean that?"

"I do--without the smallest reservation."

Clara became thoughtful. Leonard Tregonell was one of the best matches in the county, and he had always been civil to her. They had tastes in common, were both horsey and doggy, and plain-spoken to brusqueness. Why should not she be mistress of Mount Royal, by-and-by, if Christabel despised her opportunities?

At half-past seven, the last carriage had driven away from the porch; and Mrs. Tregonell, thoroughly exhausted by the exertions of the afternoon, reclined languidly in her favourite chair, moved from its winter-place by the hearth, to a deep embayed window looking on to the rose-garden. Christabel sat on a stool at her aunt's feet, her fair head resting against the cushioned elbow of Mrs. Tregonell's chair.

"Well, Auntie, the people are gone and the birthday is over. Isn't that a blessing?" she said lightly.

"Yes, dear, it is over, and you are of age--your own mistress. My guardianship expires to-day. I wonder whether I shall find any difference in my darling now she is out of leading-strings."

"I don't think you will, Auntie. I have not much inclination for desperate flights of any kind. What can freedom or the unrestricted use of my fortune give me, which your indulgence has not already given? What whim or fancy of mine have you ever thwarted? No, Aunt Di, I don't think there is any scope for rebellion on my part."

"And you will not leave me, dear, till the end?" pleaded the widow.

"Your bondage cannot be for very long."

"Auntie! how can you speak like that, when you know--when you must know that I have no one in the world but you, now--no one, dearest," said Christabel, on her knees at her aunt's feet, clasping and kissing the pale transparent hands. "I have not the knack of loving many people.

Jessie is very good to me, and I am fond of her as my friend and companion. Uncle Oliver is all goodness, and I am fond of him in just the same way. But I never _loved_ any one but you and Angus. Angus is gone from me, and if G.o.d takes you, Auntie, my prayer is that I may speedily follow you."

"My love, that is a blasphemous prayer: it implies doubt in G.o.d's goodness. He means the young and innocent to be happy in this world--happy and a source of happiness to others. You will form new ties: a husband and children will console you for all you have lost in the past."

"No, aunt, I shall never marry. Put that idea out of your mind. You will think less badly of me for refusing Leonard if you understand that I have made up my mind to live and die unmarried."

"But I cannot and will not believe that, Belle: whatever you may think now, a year hence your ideas will have entirely altered. Remember my own history. When George Hamleigh died I thought the world--so far as it concerned me--had come to an end, that I had only to wait for death. My fondest hope was that I should die within the year, and be buried in a grave near his--yet five years afterwards I was a happy wife and mother."

"G.o.d was good to you," said Christabel, quietly, thinking all the while that her aunt must have been made of a different clay from herself.

There was a degradation in being able to forget: it implied a lower kind of organism than that finely strung nature which loves once and once only.

CHAPTER VI.

"THAT LIP AND VOICE ARE MUTE FOR EVER."

Having pledged herself to remain with her aunt to the end, Christabel was fain to make the best of her life at Mount Royal, and in order to do this she must needs keep on good terms with her cousin. Leonard's conduct of late had been irreproachable: he was attentive to his mother, all amiability to Christabel, and almost civil to Miss Bridgeman. He contrived to make his peace with Randie, and he made such a good impression upon Major Bree that he won the warm praises of that gentleman.

The cross country rides were resumed, the Major always in attendance; and Leonard and his cousin were seen so often together, riding, driving, or walking, that the idea of an engagement between them became a fixture in the local mind, which held that when one was off with the old love it was well to be on with the new.

And so the summer ripened and waned. Mrs. Tregonell's health seemed to improve in the calm happiness of a domestic life in which there was no indication of disunion. She had never surrendered her hope of Christabel's relenting. Leonard's frank and generous character--his good looks--his local popularity--must ultimately prevail over the memory of another--that other having so completely given up his chances. Mrs.

Tregonell was half inclined to recognize the n.o.bleness of that renunciation; half disposed to accept it as a proof that Angus Hamleigh's heart still hankered after the actress who had been his first infatuation. In either case no one could doubt that it was well for Christabel to be released from such an engagement. To wed Angus would have been to tie herself to sickness and death--to take upon herself the burden of early widowhood, to put on sackcloth and ashes as a wedding garment.

It was winter, and there were patches of snow upon the hills, and sea and sky were of one chill slaty hue, before Leonard ventured to repeat that question which he had asked with such ill effect in the sweet summer morning, between hedgerows flushed with roses. But through all the changes of the waning year there had been one purpose in his mind, and every act of his life had tended to one result. He had sworn to himself that his cousin should be his wife. Whatever barriers of disinclination, direct antagonism even, there might be on her side must be broken down by dogged patience, unyielding determination on his side.

He had the spirit of the hunter, to whom that prey is most precious which costs the longest chase. He loved his cousin more pa.s.sionately to-day, after keeping his feelings in check for six months, than he had loved her when he asked her to be his wife. Every day of delay had increased his ardour and strengthened his resolve.

It was New Year's day. Christabel and Miss Bridgeman had been to church in the morning, and had taken a long walk with Leonard, who contrived to waylay them at the church door after church. Then had come a rather late luncheon, after which Christabel spent an hour in her aunt's room reading to her, and talking a little in a subdued way. It was one of Mrs. Tregonell's bad days, a day upon which she could hardly leave her sofa, and Christabel came away from the invalid's room full of sadness.

She was sitting by the fire in the library, alone in the dusk save for Randie's company, when her cousin came in and found her.

"Why, Belle, what are you doing all alone in the dark?" he exclaimed. "I almost thought the room was empty."

"I have been thinking," she said, with a sigh.

"Your thoughts could not have been over-pleasant, I should think, by that sigh," said Leonard, coming over to the hearth, and drawing the logs together. "There's a cheerful blaze for you. Don't give way to sad thoughts on the first day of the year, Belle: it's a bad beginning."

"I have been thinking of your dear mother, Leonard: _my_ mother, for she has been more to me than one mother in a hundred is to her daughter. She is with us to-day--a part of our lives--very frail and feeble, but still our own. Where will she be next New Year's day?"

"Ah, Belle, that's a bad look out for both of us," answered Leonard, seating himself in his mother's empty chair. "I'm afraid she won't last out the year that begins to-day. But she has seemed brighter and happier lately, hasn't she?"

"Yes, I think she has been happier," said Christabel.

"Do you know why?"

His cousin did not answer him. She sat with her face bent over her dog, hiding her tears on Randie's sleek black head.

"I think I know why the mother has been so tranquil in her mind lately, Belle," said Leonard, with unusual earnestness, "and I think you know just as well as I do. She has seen you and me more friendly together--more cousinly--and she has looked forward to the fulfilment of an old wish and dream of hers. She has looked for the speedy realization of that wish, Belle, although six months ago it seemed hopeless. She wants to see the two people she loves best on earth united, before she is taken away. It would make the close of her life happy, if she could see my happiness secure. I believe you know that, Belle."

"Yes, I know that it is so. But that can never be."

"That is a hard saying, Christabel. Half a year ago I asked you a question, and you said no. Many a man in my position would have been too proud to run the risk of a second refusal. He would have gone away in a huff and found comfort somewhere else. But I knew that there was only one woman in the world who could make me happy, and I waited for her.

You must own that I have been patient, have I not, Belle?"

"You have been very devoted to your dear mother--very good to me. I cannot deny that, Leonard," Christabel answered gravely.

She had dried her tears, and lifted her head from the dog's neck, and sat looking straight at the fire, self-possessed and sad. It seemed to her as if all possibility of happiness had gone out of her life.

"Am I to have no reward?" asked Leonard. "You know with what hope I have waited--you know that our marriage would make my mother happy, that it would make the end of her life a festival. You owe me nothing, but you owe her something. That is sueing _in forma pauperis_, isn't it, Belle?

But I have no pride where you are concerned."

"You ask me to be your wife; you don't even ask if I love you," said Christabel, bitterly. "What if I were to say yes, and then tell you afterwards that my heart still belongs to Angus Hamleigh."

"You had better tell me that now, if it is so," said Leonard, his face darkening in the firelight.

"Then I will tell you that it is so. I gave him up because I thought it my duty to give him up. I believed that in honour he belonged to another woman. I believe so still. But I have never left off loving him. That is why I have made up my mind never to marry."

"You are wise," retorted Leonard, "such a confession as that would settle for most men. But it does not settle for me, Belle. I am too far gone. If you are a fool about Hamleigh, I am a fool about you. Only say you will marry me, and I will take my chance of all the rest. I know you will be a good wife; and I will be a good husband to you. And I suppose in the end you will get to care for me, a little. One thing is certain, that I can't be happy without you; so I would gladly run the risk of an occasional taste of misery with you. Come, Belle, is it a bargain," he pleaded, taking her unresisting hands. "Say that it is, dearest. Let me kiss the future mistress of Mount Royal."

He bent over her and kissed her--kissed those lips which had once been sacred to Angus Hamleigh, which she had sworn in her heart should be kissed by no other man upon earth. She recoiled from him with a shiver of disgust--no good omen for their wedded bliss.

"This will make our mother very happy," said Leonard. "Come to her now, Belle, and let us tell her."