"And you held your tongue about it?"

"There was nothing to say," said Elizabeth, with a smile.

Percival shrugged his shoulders, and went back to the drawing-room.

CHAPTER IX.

ELIZABETH'S WOOING.

Percival and his friend dined with the Herons that evening. Mr. Heron was an artist by profession; he was a fair, abstracted-looking man, with gold eye-glasses, which he was always sticking ineffectually upon the bridge of his nose and nervously feeling for when they tumbled down again. He had painted several good pictures in his time, and was in the habit of earning a fairly good income; but owing to some want of management, either on his part or his wife's, his income never seemed quite large enough for the needs of the household. The servants' wages were usually in arrear; the fittings of the house were broken and never repaired; there were wonderful gaps in the furniture and the china, which nobody ever appeared to think of filling up. Rupert remembered the ways of the house when he had boarded there, and was not surprised to find himself dining upon mutton half-burnt and half-raw, potatoes more like bullets than vegetables, and a partially cooked rice-pudding, served upon the remains of at least three dinner-services, accompanied by sour beer and very indifferent claret. Percival did not even pretend to eat; he sat back in his chair and declared, with an air of polite disgust, that he was not hungry. Rupert made up for his deficiencies, however; he swallowed what was set before him and conversed with his hostess, who was quite unconscious that anything was amiss. Mrs. Heron had a vague taste for metaphysics and political economy; she had beautiful theories of education, which she was always intending, at some future time, to put into practice for the benefit of her three little boys, Harry, Willy, and Jack. She spoke of these theories, with her blue eyes fixed on vacancy and her fork poised gracefully in the air, while Vivian laboured distastefully through his dinner, and Percival frowned in silence at the table-cloth.

"I have always thought," Mrs. Heron was saying sweetly, "that children ought not to be too much controlled. Their development should be perfectly free. My children grow up like young plants, with plenty of sun and air; they play as they like; they work when they feel that they can work best; and, if at times they are a little noisy, at any rate their noise never develops into riot."

Percival did not, perhaps, intend her to hear him, but, below his breath, he burst into a sardonic, little laugh and an aside to his sister Kitty.

"Never into riot! I never heard them stop short of it!"

Mrs. Heron looked at him uncertainly, and took pains to explain herself.

"Up to a certain point, I was going to say, Percival, dear. At the proper age, I think, that discipline, entire and perfect discipline, ought to begin."

"And what is the proper age?" said Percival, ironically. "For it seems to me that the boys are now quite old enough to endure a little discipline."

"Oh, at present," said Mrs. Heron, with undisturbed composure, "they are in Elizabeth's hands. I leave them entirely to her. I trust Elizabeth perfectly."

"Is that the reason why Elizabeth does not dine with us?" said Percival, looking at his step-mother with an expression of deep hostility. But Mrs. Heron's placidity was of a kind which would not be ruffled.

"Elizabeth is so kind," she said. "She teaches them, and does everything for them; but, of course, they must go to school by-and-bye. Dear papa will not let me teach them myself. He tells me to forget that ever I was a governess; but, indeed"--with a faint, pensive smile--"my instincts are too strong for me sometimes, and I long to have my pupils back again. Do I not, Kitty, darling?"

"I was not a pupil of yours very long, Isabel," said Kitty, who never brought herself to the point of calling Mrs. Heron by anything but her Christian name.

"Not long," sighed Mrs. Heron. "Too short a time for me."

At this point Mr. Heron, who noticed very little of what was going on around him, turned to his son with a question about the politics of the day. Percival, with his nose in the air, hardly deigned at first to answer; but upon Vivian's quietly propounding some strongly Conservative views, which always acted on the younger Heron as a red rag is supposed to act upon a bull, he waxed impatient and then argumentative, until at last he talked himself into a good humour, and made everybody else good humoured.

When they returned to the untidy but pleasant-looking drawing-room, they found Elizabeth engaged in picking up the children's toys, straightening the sheets of music on the piano, and otherwise making herself generally useful; She had changed her dress, and put on a long, plain gown of white cashmere, which suited her admirably, although it was at least three years old, undeniably tight for her across the shoulders, and short at the wrists, having shrunk by repeated washings since the days when it first was made. She wore no trimmings and no ornaments, whereas Kitty, in her red frock, sported half-a-dozen trumpery bracelets, a silver necklace, and a little bunch of autumn flowers; and Mrs. Heron's pale-blue draperies were adorned with dozens of yards of cheap cream-coloured lace. Vivian looked at Elizabeth and wondered, almost for the first time, why she differed so greatly from the Herons. He had often seen her before; but, being now particularly interested by what he had heard about her, he observed her more than usual.

Mrs. Heron sat down at the piano; she played well, and was rather fond of exhibiting her musical proficiency. Percival and Kitty were engaged in an animated, low-toned conversation. Rupert approached Elizabeth, who was arranging some sketches in a portfolio with the diligence of a housemaid. She was standing just within the studio, which was separated from the drawing-room by a velvet curtain now partially drawn aside.

"Do you sketch? are these your drawings?" he asked her.

"No, they are Uncle Alfred's. I cannot draw."

"You are musical, I suppose," said Rupert, carelessly.

He took it for granted that, if a girl did not draw, she must needs play the piano. But her next words undeceived him.

"No, I can't play. I have no accomplishments."

"What do you mean by accomplishments?" asked Vivian, smiling.

"I mean that I know nothing about French and German, or music and drawing," said Elizabeth, calmly. "I never had any systematic education.

I should make rather a good housemaid, I believe, but my friends won't allow me to take a housemaid's situation."

"I should think not," ejaculated Vivian.

"But it is all that I am fit for," she continued, quietly. "And I think it is rather a pity that I am not allowed to be happy in my own way."

There was a little silence. Vivian felt himself scarcely equal to the occasion. Presently she said, with more quickness of speech than usual:--

"You have been in Scotland lately, have you not?"

"I was there a short time ago, but for two days only."

"Ah, yes, you went to Netherglen?"

"I did. The Luttrells are connections of yours, are they not, Miss Murray?"

"Very distant ones," said Elizabeth.

"You know that Brian Luttrell has gone abroad?"

"I have heard so."

There was very little to be got out of Miss Murray. Vivian was almost glad when Percival joined them, and he was able to slip back to Kitty, with whom he had no difficulty in carrying on a conversation.

The studio was dimly lighted, and Percival, either by accident or design, allowed the curtain to fall entirely over the aperture between the two rooms. He looked round him. Mr. Heron was absent, and they had the room to themselves. Several unfinished canvasses were leaning against the walls; the portrait of an exceedingly cadaverous-looking old man was conspicuous upon the artist's easel; the lay figure was draped like a monk, and had a cowl drawn over its stiff, wooden head. Percival shrugged his shoulders.

"My father's studio isn't an attractive-looking place," he said, with a growl of disgust in his voice.

"Why did you come into it?" said Elizabeth.

"I had a good reason," he answered, looking at her.

If she understood the meaning that he wished to convey, it certainly did not embarrass or distress her in the least. She gave him a very friendly, but serious, kind of smile, and went on calmly with her work of sorting the papers and sketches that lay scattered around her.

"Elizabeth," he said, "I am offended with you."

"That happens so often," she replied, "that I am never greatly surprised nor greatly concerned at hearing it."

"It is of little consequence to you, no doubt," said Percival, rather huffily; "but I am--for once--perfectly serious, Elizabeth. Why could you not come down to dinner to-night when Rupert and I were here?"

"I very seldom come down to dinner. I was with the children."

"The children are not your business."