Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/324

314[March 6, 1869] Othello, which Lady Caroline selected for her first Shakespearian reading, apparently did not interest her very much. The great family history of the Wests, derived from ancient chronicles and documents, upon which Lord Hetherington's secretary was engaged, made but little progress on the occasions of her ladyship's visits. There were the longest and the pleasantest talks. In Caroline Mansergh's hands Joyce was as pliable as potter's clay. In less than a week after the dinner party he had told her the history of his life, made her acquainted with his hopes and fears, his wishes and aspirations. Of course she heard about his engagement to Marian, equally of course that was the part of the story in which she felt, and showed, the greatest interest. Very quickly she knew it all. Under her skilful questioning, Joyce not merely told her what had actually occurred, but opened to her the secret chambers of his heart, and displayed to her penetrating sense feelings, with the existence of which he himself was scarcely acquainted. The odd, uncomfortable sensation which first came over him in his last walk with Marian round the school garden, when she spoke of how it might have been better if they had never met, and how poorly armed he was for the great conflict of life; the renewal of the sting with its bitterness increased fifty-fold at the receipt of her letter dilating on the luxury of Woolgreaves, and her dread of the poverty which they would have to encounter; the last hint given to him in the worldly advice contained in Jack Byrne's letter—all these were submitted to Lady Caroline's keen powers of dissection, without Walter's being in the least aware how much of his inner life he had made patent to her. A look, a nod, a word here or there, begat, increased, and developed his assurance of sympathy; and he could have talked till all eternity on the subject dearest to his heart. Lady Caroline let him talk, and only starred the dialogue with occasional interjections, always of a sympathising character. When she was alone, she would sit for hours reviewing the conversation just past in the minutest detail, weighing and re-weighing sentences and even words which Joyce had spoken, sifting, balancing, ascribing to such and such influences, putting aside such and such theories, bringing all her feminine wits—and in the great points of feminine cleverness, an odd common sense, and an undefinable blundering on to the right, she had no superior—to the solution of the question of Walter Joyce's future so far as Marian Ashurst was concerned. Whatever conclusion she may have arrived at she kept to herself; no one ever had the slightest glimmering of it. Her talks with Walter Joyce were as numerous as ever, her interest in his career no less, her delight in his society by no means impaired; but the name of Miss Ashurst never passed Lady Caroline's lips, and whenever she saw the conversation necessarily veering that way, she invariably struck it out into some new channel. Not that Lady Caroline Mansergh had any jealousy of this "simple maiden in her flower;" she would not have allowed that for an instant, would not have allowed, in her most secret communings with herself, that such a thing could be possible; for she had been properly and rigidly brought up in the Belgravian code of morals, though a little inclined to kick against them now, and think for herself; and the Belgravian code of morals holds the cultivation of the bienséances as the most essential portion of a young lady's curriculum, and the bienséances effectively ignore the existence of any such low sentiment as jealousy in the minds of perfectly constituted members of the upper classes. Not that Walter Joyce would have noticed the display of any such passion as jealousy, or, as Lady Caroline thought rather ruefully, could allow any such feeling to be excited in him. In all her experience—and it had been large—she had never come across a man so completelyWell, she could scarcely find a term for it. It was not apathetic, because he was bright, and intelligent, and earnest. Perhaps confiding was the best word to use, so far as his relations with Marian were concerned, though, as Lady Caroline felt, those relations were a little dashed with recent doubt; and as for his feelings with regard to herself, skilled mistress as she was in the art of such wordy warfare, Lady Caroline could never trap him into an ambuscade, or force him into anything like an acknowledgment of a liking for her. It was not for the want of trying to evoke it, not for lack of given opportunity on her part, that this avowal never was made. Fortune favoured her, notably on one occasion; and if Walter Joyce had ever contemplated anything beyond a feeling of pleasant friendship for Lady Caroline Mansergh, he would have availed himself of that occasion for expressing it. Thus it came about. Lady Caroline was sitting half buried in a big soft easy chair before