Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 2.pdf/153

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CONDUCTED BY ""
 * No. 33..
 * SATURDAY, JULY 17, 1869.
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communication which Mr. Benthall, in his bluff off-hand manner, had made to Walter Joyce, had surprised the latter very much, and embarrassed him not a little. Ever since the receipt of Marian Ashurst's letter announcing her intention of marrying Mr. Creswell, Joyce had lived absolutely free from any influence of "the cruel madness of love, the poison of honey flowers, and all the measureless ill." All his thoughts had been given up to labour and ambition, and, with the exception of his deep-rooted and genuine regard for Lady Caroline, and his friendly liking for the Creswell girls, he entertained no feeling for any woman living, unless a suspicion of and an aversion to Marian Creswell might be so taken into account. Had he this special partiality for Maud Creswell, of which Benthall had spoken so plainly? He set to work to catechise himself, to look back through the events of the past few months, noting what he remembered of their relations to each other.

Yes, he had seen a great deal of Maud; he remembered very frequent occasions on which they had been thrown together. He had not noticed it at the time; it seemed to come naturally enough. Gertrude, of course, was engaged with Benthall when he was in town, in writing to him or thinking of him when he was away, and Lady Caroline had to go through all the hard work which falls upon a great lady in society, work the amount of which can only be appreciated by those who have performed it or seen it performed. So that, as Joyce then recollected, he and Maud had been thrown a great deal together, and, as he further recollected, they had had a great many discussions on topics very far removed from the mere ordinary frivolity of society-talk; and he had noticed that she seemed to have clear ideas, which she understood how to express. What an odd thing, that what Benthall said had never struck him before! It must have been patent to other people, though; and that put the matter, unpleasantly, in rather a ridiculous light. After all, though, what was there ridiculous in it? Maud was a very handsome girl, a clever girl, and an unmistakable lady. What a pretty, slight, girlish figure she had! such a graceful outline! her head was so well posed upon her neck! And Joyce smiled as he found himself drawing lines in the air with the paper-knife which he was idly tossing in his hand.

And he had Benthall's assurance that the girl cared for him; that was something. Benthall was a man careful in the extreme as to what he said, and he would not have made such a statement where a girl was concerned, and that girl his own sister-in-law, unless he were tolerably certain of being right. His own sister-in-law; he had it then, of course, from Gertrude, who was Maud's second self, and would know all about it. It was satisfactory to know that there was a woman in the world who cared for him, and though without the smallest particle of vanity he accepted the belief very readily, for his rejection by Marian Ashurst and the indignity which he had suffered at her hands had by no means rendered him generally cynical or suspicious to the sex. Marian Ashurst! what an age ago it seemed since the days