Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 129.djvu/342

334 had barely time to pay his greetings to the ladies of the family when dinner was announced. Although the occasion did not lend itself to love-passages, for Lucy was surrounded by visitors, it would have been easy for a lover during the brief moment while he held her hand in his to exchange signals with the eyes that would have been easily understood; but although she cast a timid inquiring glance at her hero, as if to learn in what mood to find him, it met with no response. Poor Lucy showed only too plainly that she was so much in love as to be ready to accept her lover on his own terms; and in his present mood he was cruel enough to take advantage of his conquest. Perchance the absence of difficulty in winning it had robbed the prize of its value. He did not even notice that she was taken in to dinner by Mr. Hanckes. It fell to him to give his arm to the hostess; and sitting at the same side of the long table as Lucy, and at the other end of it, she could not see him, and he sat moody and preoccupied, not caring to watch her. This eating and drinking, all this pomp and display, and waste of food and wine, and show and glitter, jarred harshly on his senses, as he contrasted the forlorn condition of his two friends so close at hand, and he was in no humour for small-talk and civility. But Mrs. Peevor was at no time a great talker; and after a few necessary commonplaces about the children, and a polite reference to the business which called him away, she was sufficiently occupied in watching the progress of the feast. The lady on his right was one of those numerous members of society who go persistently to dinner-parties without the least intention of amusing or being amused, and on this occasion was allowed full liberty to gratify her tastes. But, long and dreary though the meal was to Yorke, the sitting in silence and inaction through the long courses seemed preferable to moving away; and when the ladies left the room — Lucy casting back as she passed out a timid glance, to which he merely answered with an empty smile — Mr. Peevor moved up to his wife's seat, and accepted his languid attention as sufficient encouragement to launch into the domestic price-current with a degree of havering persistence that rendered a listener superfluous, and was easily led on to protract the sitting to a much greater length than usual, till even some of the ten decanters showed signs of exhaustion. Yorke, as he well knew, had a duty to do in the drawing-room. To meet Lucy again otherwise than on the new footing justified by what had passed the day before, would be cruel and cowardly. Yet because in his present mood it was a duty and no more, what had still to be done seemed now distasteful. Was it because the events of the last few hours had brought back so vividly the day-dreams of his early manhood, and that he shrank from the effort of finally casting off the bonds which he had worn so long that they had grown to be a part of himself? Or was it the reason which he put before himself as the real one, that to be indulging at such a time in schemes for his own happiness was a selfish desecration of old friendship for the two unhappy persons for whose sufferings he professed to feel so deeply? Whatever the real cause, it was at any rate a sort of relief that the gentlemen sat unusually long over their wine, not moving to the yellow drawing-room till it was nearly time for the visitors' carriages to arrive. Even then Mr. Peevor insisted on bringing up the different male guests to be introduced to him — middle-aged gentlemen all apparently connected in some way with the city; and then on taking him round to be introduced to their various partners, matrons of more or less ample figure, as his (Mr. Peevor's) distinguished friend, Colonel Yorke, the Victoria-Cross man, and so forth. And on this occasion he was almost glad to have to go through the ceremony; it gave him an excuse for avoiding Lucy, although he could not help noticing how distraught she looked, as she interrupted the conversation in which Mr. Hanckes was engaging her to steal a troubled glance in his direction. Poor little Lucy! The first real gentleman as it seemed to her that she had ever met, and a hero to boot, this noble creature who had won her simple heart almost from the first moment he had looked at her, this splendid being she had fondly believed to have also fallen in love with herself! but the cup of bliss seemed now to be shattered almost before she had raised it to her lips, and for the first time in her short life, tranquil and tame, she felt all the pangs of real unhappiness.

Even when the guests, except Mr. Hanckes, who was to stop for the night, had taken their departure, and their party was reduced to half-a-dozen persons — for Miss Maria had not come down-stairs this evening — he engaged Miss Cathy in conversation in quite another part of the large room. Miss Cathy had taken advantage of the thaw to go out hunting that