Then he was absolutely at a loss. Beyond Mr. Surtees or Larry Twentyman he did not know what possible lover Dillsborough could have afforded. And yet the very rapidity of her answer when the curate's name had been mentioned had convinced him that there was some other person,--had increased the strength of that conviction which her silence had produced. "Have you nothing that you can tell me, Mary?"

"No, papa." Then he gave her back the letter and she left the room without another word. Of course his sanction to the letter had now been given, and it was addressed to Chowton Farm and posted before half an hour was over. She saw him again in the afternoon of the same day and asked him to tell her stepmother what she had done. "Mamma ought to know," she said.

"But you haven't sent it."

"Yes, papa;--it is in the post."

Then it occurred to him that his wife would tell him that he should have prevented the sending of the letter,--that he should have destroyed it and altogether taken the matter with a high hand. "You can't tell her yourself?" he asked.

"I would rather you did. Mamma has been so hard to me since I came home."

He did tell his wife and she overwhelmed him by the violence of her reproaches. He could never have been in earnest, or he would not have allowed such a letter as that to pa.s.s through his hands. He must be afraid of his own child. He did not know his own duty. He had been deceiving her,--his wife,--from first to last. Then she threw herself into a torrent of tears declaring that she had been betrayed. There had been a conspiracy between them, and now everything might go to the dogs, and she would not lift up her hands again to save them. But before the evening came round she was again on the alert, and again resolved that she would not even yet give way. What was there in a letter more than in a spoken word? She would tell Larry to disregard the letter. But first she made a futile attempt to clutch the letter from the guardianship of the Post Office, and she went to the Postmaster a.s.suring him that there had been a mistake in the family, that a wrong letter had been put into a wrong envelope, and begging that the letter addressed to Mr. Twentyman might be given back to her. The Postmaster, half vacillating in his desire to oblige a neighbour, produced the letter and Mrs. Masters put out her hand to grasp it; but the servant of the public,--who had been thoroughly grounded in his duties by one of those trusty guardians of our correspondence who inspect and survey our provincial post offices,--remembered himself at the last moment and expressing the violence of his regret, replaced the letter in the box. Mrs. Masters, in her anger and grief, condescended to say very hard things to her neighbour;--but the man remembered his duty and was firm.

On that evening Larry Twentyman did not attend the Dillsborough Club,--having in the course of the week notified to the attorney that he should be a defaulter. Mr. Masters himself went over earlier than usual, his own house having become very uncomfortable to him. Mrs.

Masters for an hour sat expecting that Larry would come, and when the evening pa.s.sed away without his appearance, she was convinced that the unusual absence was a part of the conspiracy against her.

Larry did not get his letter till the Monday morning. On the last Thursday and Sat.u.r.day he had consoled himself for his doubts with the U. R. U., and was minded to do so on the Monday also. He had not gone to the club on Sat.u.r.day and had moped about Chowton all the Sunday in a feverish state because of his doubts. It seemed to him that the two months would never be over. On the Monday he was out early on the farm and then came down in his boots and breeches, and had his red coat ready at the fire while he sat at breakfast. The meet was fifteen miles off and he had sent on his hunter, intending to travel thither in his dog cart. Just as he was cutting himself a slice of beef the postman came, and of course he read his letter. He read it with the carving knife in his hand, and then he stood gazing at his mother. "What is it, Larry?" she asked; "is anything wrong?"

"Wrong,--well; I don't know," he said. "I don't know what you call wrong. I shan't hunt; that's all." Then he threw aside the knife and pushed away his plate and marched out of the room with the open letter in his hand.

Mrs. Twentyman knew very well of his love,--as indeed did nearly all Dillsborough; but she had heard nothing of the two months and did not connect the letter with Mary Masters. Surely he must have lost a large sum of money. That was her idea till she saw him again late in the afternoon.

He never went near the hounds that day or near his business. He was not then man enough for either. But he walked about the fields, keeping out of sight of everybody. It was all over now. It must be all over when she wrote to him a letter like that. Why had she tempted him to thoughts of happiness and success by that promise of two months' grace? He supposed that he was not good enough;--or that she thought he was not good enough. Then he remembered his acres, and his material comforts, and tried to console himself by reflecting that Mary Masters might very well do worse in the world. But there was no consolation in it. He had tried his best because he had really loved the girl. He had failed, and all the world,--all his world,--would know that he had failed. There was not a man in the club,--hardly a man in the hunt,--who was not aware that he had offered to Mary Masters. During the last two months he had not been so reticent as was prudent, and had almost boasted to Fred Botsey of success. And then how was he to live at Chowton Farm without Mary Masters as his wife? As he returned home he almost made up his mind that he would not continue to live at Chowton Farm.

He came back through Dillsborough Wood; and there, prowling about, he met Goarly. "Well, Mr. Twentyman," said the man, "I am making it all straight now with his Lordship."

"I don't care what you're doing," said Larry in his misery. "You are an infernal blackguard and that's the best of you."

CHAPTER VIII.

CHOWTON FARM FOR SALE.

John Morton had returned to town soon after his walk into Dillsborough and had there learned from different sources that both Arabella Trefoil and Lord Rufford had gone or were going to Mistletoe. He had seen Lord Augustus who, though he could tell him nothing else about his daughter, had not been slow to inform him that she was going to the house of her n.o.ble uncle. When Morton had spoken to him very seriously about the engagement he declared that he knew nothing about it,--except that he had given his consent if the settlements were all right. Lady Augustus managed all that. Morton had then said that under those circ.u.mstances he feared he must regard the honour which he had hoped to enjoy as being beyond his reach.

Lord Augustus had shrugged his shoulders and had gone back to his whist, this interview having taken place in the strangers' room of his club. That Lord Rufford was also going to Mistletoe he heard from young Glossop at the Foreign Office. It was quite possible that Glossop had been instructed to make this known to Morton by his sister Lady Penwether. Then Morton declared that the thing was over and that he would trouble himself no more about it. But this resolution did not make him at all contented, and in his misery he went again down to his solitude at Bragton.

And now when he might fairly consider himself to be free, and when he should surely have congratulated himself on a most lucky escape from the great danger into which he had fallen, his love and admiration for the girl returned to him in a most wonderful manner. He thought of her beauty and her grace, and the manner in which she would sit at the head of his table when the time should come for him to be promoted to some great capital. To him she had fascinations which the reader, who perhaps knows her better than he ever did, will not share. He could forgive the coldness of her conduct to himself--he himself not being by nature demonstrative or impa.s.sioned,--if only she were not more kind to any rival. It was the fact that she should be visiting at the same house with Lord Rufford after what he had seen at Rufford Hall which had angered him. But now in his solitude he thought that he might have been wrong at Rufford Hall. If it were the case that the girl feared that her marriage might be prevented by the operations of lawyers and family friends, of course she would be right not to throw herself into his arms,--even metaphorically. He was a cold, just man who, when he had loved, could not easily get rid of his love, and now he would ask himself whether he was not hard upon the girl. It was natural that she should be at Mistletoe; but then why should Lord Rufford be there with her?

His prospects at Patagonia did not console him much. No doubt it was a handsome mission for a man of his age and there were sundry Patagonian questions of importance at the present moment which would give him a certain weight. Patagonia was repudiating a loan, and it was hoped that he might induce a better feeling in the Patagonian Parliament. There was the Patagonian railway for joining the Straits to the Cape the details of which he was now studying with great diligence. And then there was the vital question of boundary between Patagonia and the Argentine Republic by settling which, should he be happy enough to succeed in doing so, he would prevent the horrors of warfare. He endeavoured to fix his mind with satisfaction on these great objects as he pored over the reports and papers which had been heaped upon him since he had accepted the mission. But there was present to him always a feeling that the men at the Foreign Office had been glad to get any respectable diplomate to go to Patagonia, and that his brethren in the profession had marvelled at his acceptance of such a mission. One never likes to be thanked over much for doing anything. It creates a feeling that one has given more than was expedient. He knew that he must now go to Patagonia, but he repented the alacrity with which he had acceded to the proposition.

Whether he did marry Arabella Trefoil or whether he did not, there was no adequate reason for such a banishment. And yet he could not now escape it!

It was on a Monday morning that Larry Twentyman had found himself unable to go hunting. On the Tuesday he gave his workmen about the farm such a routing as they had not received for many a month. There had not been a dungheap or a cowshed which he had not visited, nor a fence about the place with which he had not found fault. He was at it all day, trying thus to console himself, but in vain; and when his mother in the evening said some word of her misery in regard to the turkeys he had told her that as far as he was concerned Goarly might poison every fox in the county. Then the poor woman knew that matters were going badly with her son. On the Wednesday, when the hounds met within two miles of Chowton, he again stayed at home; but in the afternoon he rode into Dillsborough and contrived to see the attorney without being seen by any of the ladies of the family. The interview did not seem to do him any good. On the Thursday morning he walked across to Bragton and with a firm voice asked to see the Squire.

Morton who was deep in the boundary question put aside his papers and welcomed his neighbour.

Now it must be explained that when, in former years, his son's debts had acc.u.mulated on old Mr. Reginald Morton, so that he had been obliged to part with some portion of his unentailed property, he had sold that which lay in the parish of St. John's, Dillsborough. The lands in Bragton and Mallingham he could not sell;--but Chowton Farm which was in St. John's had been bought by Larry Twentyman's grandfather. For a time there had been some bitterness of feeling; but the Twentymans had been well-to-do respectable people, most anxious to be good neighbours, and had gradually made themselves liked by the owner of Bragton. The present Squire had of course known nothing of Chowton as a part of the Morton property, and had no more desire for it than for any of Lord Rufford's acres which were contiguous to his own. He shook hands cordially with his neighbour, as though this visit were the most natural thing in the world, and asked some questions about Goarly and the hunt.

"I believe that'll all come square, Mr. Morton. I'm not interesting myself much about it now." Larry was not dressed like himself. He had on a dark brown coat, and dark pantaloons and a chimney-pot hat. He was conspicuous generally for light-coloured close-fitting garments and for a billyc.o.c.k hat. He was very unlike his usual self on the present occasion.

"I thought you were just the man who did interest himself about those things."

"Well; yes; once it was so, Mr. Morton. What I've got to say now, Mr.

Morton, is this. Chowton Farm is in the market! But I wouldn't say a word to any one about it till you had had the offer."

"You going to sell Chowton!"

"Yes, Mr. Morton, I am."

"From all I have heard of you I wouldn't have believed it if anybody else had told me."

"It's a fact, Mr. Morton. There are three hundred and twenty acres. I put the rental at 30_s._ an acre. You know what you get, Mr. Morton, for the land that lies next to it. And I think twenty-eight years'

purchase isn't more than it's worth. Those are my ideas as to price, Mr. Morton. There isn't a halfpenny owing on it--not in the way of mortgage."

"I dare say it's worth that."

"Up at auction I might get a turn more, Mr. Morton;--but those are my ideas at present."

John Morton, who was a man of business, went to work at once with his pencil and in two minutes had made out a total. "I don't know that I could put my hand on 14,000 even if I were minded to make the purchase."

"That needn't stand in the way, sir. Any part you please could lie on mortgage at 4 per cent." Larry in the midst of his distress had certain clear ideas about business.

"This is a very serious proposition, Mr. Twentyman."

"Yes, indeed, sir."

"Have you any other views in life?"

"I can't say as I have any fixed. I shan't be idle, Mr. Morton. I never was idle. I was thinking perhaps of New Zealand."

"A very fine colony for a young man, no doubt. But, seeing how well you are established here--."

"I can't stay here, Mr. Morton. I've made up my mind about that.

There are things which a man can't bear,--not and live quiet. As for hunting, I don't care about it any more than--nothing."

"I am sorry that anything should have made you so unhappy."

"Well;--I am unhappy. That's about the truth of it. And I always shall be unhappy here. There's nothing else for it but going away."

"If it's anything sudden, Mr. Twentyman, allow me to say that you ought not to sell your property without grave consideration."

"I have considered it,--very grave, Mr. Morton."

"Ah,--but I mean long consideration. Take a year to think of it.

You can't buy such a place back in a year. I don't know you well enough to be justified in inquiring into the circ.u.mstances of your trouble;--but unless it be something which makes it altogether inexpedient, or almost impossible that you should remain in the neighbourhood, you should not sell Chowton."

"I'll tell you, Mr. Morton," said Larry almost weeping. Poor Larry whether in his triumph or his sorrow had no gift of reticence and now told his neighbour the whole story of his love. He was certain it had become quite hopeless. He was sure that she would never have written him a letter if there had been any smallest chance left. According to his ideas a girl might say "no" half-a-dozen times and yet not mean much; but when she had committed herself to a letter she could not go back from it.