'Peter and I didn't care to ride him,' said Sir Vernon. 'We had Shelties when we were three-year-olds; but I know when I began Virgil I used to think the wooden horse that got into Troy was an exaggerated copy of this one.

He showed his cousin the room in which her grandfather and grandmother died--an immense apartment, wherein stood, grim and tall, a gigantic mahogany four-poster, draped with dark green velvet.

'I can't fancy anybody doing anything else in such a room,' said Ida, to whom the s.p.a.cious chamber looked as gloomy as a charnel-house. 'I beg your pardon. I hope you don't sleep here.'

'No, my diggings are at the other end of the house, looking into the stable-yard. I like to be able to put my head out of window and order my horse--saves time and trouble. We keep the rooms at this end for visitors.'

The gong boomed loud and long, much to the relief of poor Blanche, whose spirits had been slowly sinking, in unison with her inward cravings, and who had begun to think that the promised luncheon was a delusion and a snare, which would end in the fashionable frivolity of afternoon tea.

Sir Vernon offered his arm to Miss Wendover, and asked Brian to take Miss Palliser, while Peter was told off to Miss Rylance, leaving Bessie and the clinging Blanche like twin cherries on one stem. It was curious for Ida to find herself seated presently beside the wealthy cousin of whom she had heard as a far-off and almost mythical personage, of very little account in her life; since it was so improbable that any of his wealth would ever come her way.

The luncheon was of the old-fashioned and ponderous order, excellent of its kind: the orchard-houses had given up their finest peaches and nectarines and their earliest grapes to do honour to the occasion. Miss Rylance contemplated the table decorations with mute scorn, which she hardly cared to disguise. No Venetian wine-flasks, no languorous lilies swooning in Salviati goblets, no pottery of the new green and yellow school, but ma.s.sive silver, and heavy diamond-cut gla.s.s--gaudy Staffordshire china of 'too utterly quite' the worst period of art.

Everything essentially Philistine.

Sir Vernon had placed his cousin on his left hand, and he talked to her a good deal during luncheon--asking questions as to her past life, which she answered with perfect candour. It was only when he spoke of her future that the fair brow clouded, and the cheeks reddened with a painful glow.

'I hope, now that the ice has been broken, that we are not going to be strangers any more,' said Vernon, pleasantly. 'To think that you should be such a near neighbour of mine, and that I should know nothing about it! You have been at Kingthorpe since last November, you say? How long are you going to stay there?'

'For a good many Novembers, I hope,' said Aunt Betsy, 'unless she gets tired of rural solitude, or unless a husband steals her away from me.'

'Ah, that is what all young ladies antic.i.p.ate. They never are but always to be blest,' replied Vernon, laughing. He was one of those open-hearted souls who always appreciate their own mild jokelets.

Brian, who saw Ida's pained expression, made haste to change the conversation, by an inquiry about Sir Vernon's plans for the autumn, which set that gentleman on a sporting tack, and spared Miss Palliser all further trouble.

After luncheon they went to look at the hot-houses, and dawdled away the time very agreeably until afternoon tea, Miss Rylance doing her best to improve the occasion with Peter, who was not educated up to the standard of metropolitan or South Kensingtonian young ladyhood, and who came out very badly under the process of development; for when talked to about Ruskin he was at first altogether vacuoous, but, on being pushed har believed there was a biggish swell of some such name among the Oxford dons, about whom he could not fairly be expected to know anything, as he and his brother were Cantabs: while on being languidly asked his opinion of Swinburne's last tragedy, he grew cheerful, and said he had seen him play the King to Irving's Hamlet, and that it was a very fine performance, the actor in question being a good stayer.

The thing was hopeless, and Miss Rylance felt she was wasting herself upon a dolt. After this she hardly took the trouble to suppress her yawns; yet if she had condescended to question Peter about his Alpine adventures, or to talk about his horses, guns, and dogs, she would have found him lively enough as a companion; but an education of musical 'at homes' and afternoon teas had tuned Miss Rylance's slender pipe to one particular strain, which did not suit everybody's dancing. She was heavy at heart, feeling that the whole business of the day had conduced to Ida Palliser's glorification. To be the daughter of a man born in that substantial family mansion--scion of a respectable old county family--was in itself a distinction far beyond anything Miss Rylance could boast, her grandfather having been a chemist and druggist in an obscure market town, and her father the architect of his own fortunes. She had done her best to forget this fact hitherto, but it was brought home to her mind unpleasantly to-day, when she saw the articled pupil, whose three pairs of stockings had moved her to scornful wonder, strolling about her ancestral home by the side of her first cousin, and that first cousin a baronet of Charles II's creation.

Sir Vernon and his brother were full of cordiality for their cousin, full of antic.i.p.ations of future meetings, and of hopes that Captain Palliser would come to them in October for what they called a 'shy' at the pheasants.

Ida had good cause to remember that parting in front of the cla.s.sic portico in the warm afternoon sunlight, the two brothers standing side by side, with frank, bright faces, looking up at their departing guests, all smiles and cheerful pleasure in this world's pleasantest things--a Dandie Dinmont and a big black-and-tan colley looking on at their master's knees--the _beau ideal_ of young English manhood--frank, generous, outspoken, fearless--the men who can do and die when the need comes. Her eyes lingered affectionately on that picture as the wagonette drove away by the broad gravel sweep towards the avenue; and those two figures in the sunlight haunted her memory in the days to come.

CHAPTER XVII.

OUGHT SHE TO STAY?

A week after the drive to Wimperfield Miss Wendover received a very big box of peaches and grapes, enclosing a very brief letter from Vernon Palliser to his cousin Ida.

'My dear Ida,--I venture to send Miss Wendover some of our fruit,' he wrote, 'for I understood her to say she has not much gla.s.s, and grows only flowers. Peter and I are just off to Scotland, where I suppose we shall do a little shooting, and I hope a good deal of yachting and fishing. I wish you and that nice plump little friend of yours--Bessie, I think you called her--were coming to us. Such a jolly life, bobbing about between the islands and the mainland, with the chance of an occasional storm. But I shall look forward to seeing you again in October, when I hope Miss Wendover will bring you over to stay for a week or two. What splendid ideas she has about summering hunters!--never met a more sensible woman. Always your affectionate cousin, VERNON PALLISER.'

Aunt Betsy was pleased with the tribute of hothouse fruit, and even more gratified by that remark about summering horses.

'Your cousin is a fine thoroughbred young fellow,' she said. 'If I had not been fully satisfied you came from a good stock, by my knowledge of your own organisation, I should be sure of the fact now I have seen those two young men. They are all that Englishmen ought to be.'

Ida was silent, for to her mind there was one Englishman who more completely realised her ideal of manhood--one who was no less generous and outspoken than her kind young cousins, but whose intellectual gifts, whose highly cultivated mind, and pa.s.sionate love of all that is most beautiful in life, made him infinitely their superior.

And now came, perhaps, the most bitter trial of a young life which had already seen more cloud than sunshine. The hour had come when Ida told herself that she must no longer dawdle along the flowery path of sin, no longer palter with fate. Stern duty must be obeyed, She must leave Kingthorpe. It was no longer a question of feeling, but a question of conscience--right against wrong, truth against falsehood, honour against dishonour; for she knew in her heart of hearts that Brian loved her, and that she gave him back his love, measure for measure. He had said nothing definite; she had contrived to ward off anything like a declaration; but she had not been able to prevent his absorbing her society on all possible occasions, taking possession of her, as it were, as of one who belonged to him in the present and the future, deferring to her lightest wish as only a lover defers to his mistress, studying her preferences in everything, and hardly taking the trouble to hide his comparative indifference to the society of other people. It had come to this, and she knew that there must be no further delay.

One evening, when she and Aunt Betsy had been dining alone, and had returned to the drawing-room, where it was Ida's custom at this hour to play her kind patroness to sleep with all the dreamiest and most pensive melodies in her extensive _repertoire_, the girl suddenly faltered in her playing, wandered from one air into another, and with a touch so uncertain that Aunt Betsy, who was fast lapsing into dreamland, became broad awake again all at once, and wanted to know the reason why.

'Is anything the matter? Are you ill, child?' she asked, abruptly.

Ida rose from the piano, where her tears had been dropping on the keys, and came out of the shadowy corner to the verandah, where Aunt Betsy sat among her roses, wrapped in a China c.r.a.pe shawl, one of the gifts of that Indian warrior, Colonel Wendover, August was nearly over, but the weather was still warm enough for sitting out of doors in the twilight.

'What is the matter, Ida? What has happened?' repeated Miss Wendover, with her hand on the girl's shoulder, as she bent to listen to her.

Ida was kneeling by Aunt Betsy's side, her head leaning against the arm of her chair, her face hidden.

'Nothing, nothing that you can help or cure, dearest friend,' she answered in a broken voice. 'You must know how good you have been to me.

Yes, even you must know that, although it is your nature to make light of your goodness. I think you know I love you and am grateful. Tell me that you believe that before I say another word.'

'I do believe it. Your whole conduct since you have been with me has shown as much,' answered Miss Wendover, calmly. She saw that Ida was powerfully moved, and she wanted to tranquillise her. 'What is the meaning of this preface?'

'Only that I must ask you to let me leave you.'

'Leave me! Oh, you want a holiday, I suppose?--that is natural enough. We needn't be tragic about that. You want to go over to Dieppe to see your people?'

'I want to go away from Kingthorpe for ever.'

'For ever? Ah, now we are really tragic!' said Miss Wendover, lightly, her broad, firm white hand tenderly smoothing the girl's hair and brow.

'My dear child, what has gone amiss with you? Something has, I can see.

Have you and Miss Rylance quarrelled? I know she is a viper; but I did not think she would play any of her viperish tricks with my property.'

'Miss Rylance has done nothing. I have quarrelled with n.o.body. I love and honour you and the whole house of Wendover with all my heart and mind. But there is a reason--a reason which I implore you to refrain from asking--why I ought never to have come into your house, as I did come--why I ought to leave it--must leave it for ever!'

'This is very mysterious,' said Aunt Betsy, thinking deeply. 'I could understand a reason--which might exist in a girl's romantic mind--a mistaken generosity, or a mistaken pride--the outcome of late events--which might urge you to run away--like that always wrong-headed and misguided young person, the heroine of a novel: but what reason there could have been when you came to me last winter against your coming--no--that is more than I can comprehend.'

'You are not to comprehend. It is my secret--my burden--which I must bear. I want you to believe me, that is all,--only to believe me when I say that I love you dearly, and that I have been unspeakably happy in your house--and just quietly let me go and seek my fortune elsewhere--without saying anything to anybody until I am gone.'

'And a nice weeping and wailing there will be from Bessie and her brothers and sisters when you _are_ gone!' exclaimed Miss Wendover; 'a pleasant time I shall have of it, with all of them--to say nothing of my own feelings. Do you think it is fair, Ida, to treat me like this; to make yourself pleasant to me, useful, necessary to me--to wind yourself into my heart--and then all at once, with a sudden wrench, to pluck yourself out again, and leave me to do without you? Do you call that fair play?'

'I know that it must seem like base ingrat.i.tude,' answered Ida, calm now, with a despairing calmness; 'but I cannot help myself. I am more proud than I can say that you should care for me--that my loving services have not been unwelcome. I know that you took me out of charity; and it is a delight to know that I have not been altogether a bad bargain. But I must go away.'

'I begin to see light,' said Miss Wendover, who had been thinking all this time. 'It's your father's doing. He thinks you are not making a profitable use of your education and talents. He has ordered you to go where you will get a larger salary. But don't let his needs separate us, my dear. I love you better than a few pounds a quarter. I will give you seventy, or even eighty pounds a year, if that will satisfy Captain Palliser.'

'No, no, dear Aunt Betsy. Thank G.o.d, my father is not that kind of man.

He knows how happy I have been, he is grateful to you for all your goodness to me, and more than content that I should be happy without being a burden to him.'

'Then _why_ do you want to leave me?' asked Miss Wendover, with her hands on the girl's shoulders, her eyes reading the white agonised face looking up at her in the thickening twilight. There was just light enough for her to see the look of intense pain in that pallid countenance.

'_Why_ do you want to go away?' she repeated. 'What kind of reason can that be which you fear to tell me? It must be an unworthy reason; and yet I cannot believe that you could have such a reason. Is it on account of my nephew Brian? Have you found out what I have suspected for a long time? Have you discovered that he is in love with you, and do you fancy yourself an ineligible match for him, because he is rich and you are poor, and do you think that you ought to run away in order to give him a chance of doing better for himself? If you have any such high-flown idea, abandon it. The Wendovers are not a mercenary tribe. We shall welcome Brian's bride, whoever she be, for her own sake, and not for her dowry.'

'It is no such reason. I _cannot_ tell you. You must forgive me, and let me go.'

'Then I forgive you, and you can go,' replied Miss Wendover, coldly. 'I am deeply disappointed in you. If you cared for me as you say you do, you would trust me. Love without faith is an impossibility. However, I don't want to distress you. If you are to leave me I will make your departure as pleasant as I can. When do you want to go?'