Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/255

Charles Dickens] She certainly was very beautiful! Joyce had thought so before, as he had caught transient glimpses of her flitting about the house; but now that he had, unnoticed and unseen, the opportunity of quietly studying her, he was astonished at her beauty. Her face was very pale, with an impertinent little nose, and deep violet eyes, and a small rosebud of a mouth; but perhaps her greatest charm lay in her hair, which lay in heavy thick chesnut clumps over her white forehead. Across it she wore the daintiest bit of precious lace, white lace, the merest apology for a cap, two long lappels pinned together by a diamond brooch, while the huge full clump at the back, unmistakably real, was studded with small diamond stars. She was dressed in a blue satin gown, set off with a profusion of white lace, and on her arm she wore a large heavy gold bracelet. Walter Joyce found himself gazing at her in an odd indescribable way. He had never seen anything like her, never realised such a combination of beauty, set off by the advantages of dress and surroundings. Her voice too, so bright and clear, and ringing, and her manner to him—to him? Was it not to him that she had really addressed these words of advice, although they were surely said in apparent reply to Captain Frampton's comments? If that were so, it was indeed kind of Lady Caroline, true, noble-hearted kindness; he must write and tell Marian of it.

He was thinking of this, and had in his mind a picture, confused, indeed, but full of small details which had a strange interest for him, and a vivid sadness too, of the contrast between the scene of which he formed at this moment a part, and those familiar to himself and to Marian. He was thinking of the homely simple life of the village, of the dear dead friend, so much a better man, so much a truer gentleman than any of these people, who were of so much importance in a world where he had been of so little; of the old house, the familiar routine of life, not wearisome with all its sameness, the sweetness of his first love. He was thinking of the splendour, the enervating, bewildering luxury of his present surroundings, among which he sat so strange, so solitary, save for the subtle reassuring influence, the strange, unaccountable support and something like companionship in the tones of that fair and gracious lady's voice, in the light of her swift, flitting smile in which he thought he read an admission that the company was little more to her taste than to his, had as little in common with her intellectual calibre as with his. He could not have told how she conveyed this impression to him, if he had tried to explain his feelings to any third person; he could not explain it to himself, when he thought over the events of the evening, alone in his room, which was a dingy apartment when compared with the rest of the house, but far better than any which had ever called him master; but there it was, strong and strangely attractive, mingling with the sights and sounds around him, and with the dull dead pain at his heart which had been caused by Marian's letter, and which he had never quite succeeded in conquering. There were unshed, but not unseen tears in his eyes, and a slight tremulous motion in his lips, which one pair of eyes at the table, quick, with all their languor, keen, with all their disdainful slowness, did not fail to see. The owner of those beautiful eyes did not quite understand, could not "fathom" the meaning of the sudden glitter in his; "idle tears," indeed, on such an occasion, and in such company; but, with the fine unfailing instinct of a coquette, she discerned, more clearly than Walter Joyce himself had felt it, that she counted for something in the origin and meaning of those unshed tears, and of that nervous twitching.

Lady Caroline had just removed her eyes with well feigned carelessness from Walter's face, after a covert glance, apparently casual, but in reality searching, in order to effect which she had leaned forward, and plucked some geranium leaves from a bouquet near her on the table; and Walter was removing himself still farther from the scene around, into the land of reverie, when a name spoken by Mr. Gould, and making an odd accidental harmony with his thoughts, fixed his wandering attention.

"What sort of weather had you in Hampshire?" asked Lord Hetherington, in one of those irksome pauses usually selected by some individual who is at once commonplace and good-natured to distinguish himself by uttering an inane sentiment, or asking an awkward question.

"Awful, I should fancy," said Lady Hetherington, in the most languid of her languid tones. "Awful, if it has been like the weather here. Were you really obliged to travel, Mr. Gould? I can't fancy any one going anywhere in such weather."

"As it happened," said Mr. Gould, with a rather impatient glance towards her