Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 129.djvu/89

Rh  fellow spoke so earnestly, with a sort of sigh, and, although in a low voice, so plainly as to be heard by every one in the room, which made Lucy blush still more.

"A perfect palace my worthy friend Hanckes is building down at Norwood," said the host afterwards to Yorke, when they were alone together; "all the newest improvements, and everything in the greatest taste; and, between ourselves, my Lucy might be mistress of it to-morrow — she has only to say the word; but the girl does not fancy the idea somehow; and certainly there is a good deal of difference in age." Mr. Peevor, it may be mentioned, was about twice as old as his present wife. And although not sure whether this piece of information was divulged as part of a general scheme, or simply out of pure leakiness, and while secretly ashamed of allowing himself to be affected by it, Yorke could not help being possessed in consequence with a growing sense of the obligation incumbent on him to save Lucy from so dreadful a fate. Acting under the influence of this feeling, before going to bed he made a definitive engagement to stay another week. There would be four meets of the hounds during this time within practicable distance, to two of which Miss Cathy would go, leaving him to take the other two alone. Accordingly, his previous expedition having been unsuccessful, he went up to town again next morning to find a partner to share the duty with Jumping Joseph, still billeted in the roomy stables of "The Beeches," where, although there were twice as many servants as were needed, and it seemed to be everybody's business to be looking after somebody else, there was at any rate no lack of oats, and the horses got themselves groomed somehow or other.

In this week, reflected Yorke, as he travelled up to town, there would surely be opportunity for gaining some clue to Lucy's feelings; and if he could discover that she really cared for him, and that he was not the victim of self-deception, played on by Lucy herself as well as the rest of the family, why then — truly a romantic ending of the absorbing passion of his life. For although Yorke was every hour beginning to think more of Lucy, and only wanted the encouragement of certainty to fall really in love, suspicion for the time held his feelings under restraint, and he was still able to compare her dispassionately with his ideal of what a wife should be, noting with critical eye her little imperfections. Brought up in a hotbed of luxury; to possess just such a smattering of accomplishments as serves to mark the want of better training; to get up each day to live a purposeless, dull routine, made up of changing dresses and idling about the grounds, perhaps receiving a stray visitor or two — certainly sitting down to twice as many wasteful meals as can be eaten; to have no duties, no interests, no cares; never to be of the smallest use to any living creature, — what a training for a wife and mother! And yet how many hundred girls in England were spending just the same dawdling, useless, unprofitable lives, who would never be missed outside the home circle, and hardly within it! But after all they could not well lead a more useless life than that of the ordinary English lady in India. And it is not Lucy's fault that her home surroundings are commonplace and dull. It is not she who is stupid, but the people about her. There cannot but be talent, and humour too, in the shapely little head that bears those sparkling eyes. They only want the opportunity to be brought out. Besides, it is not those most used to comfort and luxury who care most about them. The thing stales with use. Rather would those women be greedy of such things who have known the want of them, and look to marriage as a deliverance from the cares of poverty. No, there need be no fear that Lucy would shrink from the roughing of a soldier's life, if that became her lot, any more than that she has not a real woman's heart to give, if only one could be sure that it is really given.

People would say, no doubt, that he was a fortune-hunter, but he could afford to disregard such calumny — all he wanted was to find some one who really cared for him a little for his own sake. Others, again, might think he was making a misalliance, and would say spiteful things about Lucy's family; but so pretty and graceful and gentle as she was herself, she would surely outlive that. And, after all, in India nobody ever inquired who any one's father was.

 

opportunity soon came. That day when Yorke went up to town, the wind had set in from the east with a sharp frost; it was still colder when he returned to Hamwell in the evening; and next morning the look of the weather was more suggestive of skating than any other amusement. Miss Cathy, too, came downstairs with a heavy cold — she always got a cold with these horrid east winds, she