A Civil Contract

“Oh, is that all you can think of?” Julia cried bitterly. “What of my mortification? The agony of regaining my senses — seeing all those faces — !” She broke off, covering her eyes with her hand.

“Now, don’t get into a taking, love! It’s not so bad that it can’t be mended,” said Jenny soothingly.

Julia’s hand fell. “Jenny, I didn’t mean to! I thought I could meet him again just as I ought! I could have done so, had he been there at the outset! But he wasn’t! I thought — oh, I was so relieved it made me stupid beyond belief! It didn’t occur to me that he might come later. But he did, and when I turned, and suddenly saw him, so close to me — Jenny, it was the shock that made me faint!”

“You don’t have to tell me that. If it isn’t just like you to fret and fume yourself into such a state that you’d swoon off if a mouse ran across the floor! That’s pretty well what I told them all — though it wasn’t a mouse I set it down to, but the heat.”

“Mama told me how good you were,” Julia said listlessly. “Thank you! But they won’t believe it. They’ll watch me, and whisper about me. Perhaps they’ll pity me. Poor girl! He cried off, you know! ”

“Not if I have anything to say in the matter!” interrupted Jenny. “That’s precisely what I mean to nip in the bud, so I’ll thank you not to fall into a lethargy when what’s wanted is a bit of rumgumption!”

“Why should you care?” said Julia, sighing.

“Have a little sense, Julia, do!” begged Jenny. “Very agreeable it would be to have people saying that about my husband!”

Julia looked startled. “But they wouldn’t! They know the circumstances — that he couldn’t help himself!”

“That won’t stop them thinking he must have treated you pretty shabbily, if they see you looking as if you was sunk in affliction! He won’t look so, whatever he feels, because he’s too much the gentleman to let anyone think he don’t like being married to me, so the end of it will be that we’ll have people saying he’s downright heartless, not caring a straw for anything but a fortune, and happy as long as he’s rich!”

“You need not be afraid!” Julia said tragically. “I am going to return to my grandmother, and live retired. I daresay my very existence will be forgotten within a year!”

“More likely they’d have to build another hotel in Tunbridge Wells to take in your admirers,” said Jenny, keeping her temper.

Julia gave a gasp, and a quiver of laughter. “Oh, how can you be so — so odiously unfeeling?”

“Well, you know I’ve got no sensibility. But I haven’t windmills in my head either, so I’ll tell you what you will do, and that’s to confound all the spiteful toads who’d be only too ready to crow over you.” She caught the flash in Julia’s eyes, and continued: “Yes, I can just hear them! Pretending to pity you, like you said, but fairly licking their lips, and saying they’d known all along the Sylph would have a downfall. For you can’t knock all the other girls into flinders without stirring up a lot of spite and jealousy: that I do know!”

Julia sat up. “But how?” she demanded. “Papa wouldn’t consent to a betrothal, but people knew!”

“What if they did? They won’t think it wonderful that a girl that has as many beaux dangling after her as you have fell out of love as easily as she fell into it! Why, you were barely out of the schoolroom! Then you didn’t see Adam for months, so what’s more natural than you should find you’d made a mistake?” She ignored a deep sigh from Julia, and began to draw on her gloves. “So I’ll call for you tomorrow, at about four o’clock, and you’ll drive in the Park with me, like the good friends we’ve always been.”

“Oh, no!” Julia exclaimed imploringly. “No, I can’t!”

“Yes, you can. And I don’t mind owning that I’ll be very much obliged to you if you will, because I don’t care to drive alone, and I’m not yet acquainted with people. Two or three bows are the most I’ll get, if I go by myself, but if you’re sitting beside me the carriage will be mobbed, I daresay.” She got up, as a reluctant laugh escaped Julia. “And if you could manage to faint the next time you go to a party — but not at Lady Bridgewater’s assembly, mind, because she said last night she should send us a card, and it won’t answer if you do it when Adam’s present — !”

“Jenny, you are too detestable!” protested Julia, between tears and laughter. “As though I could!”

“You could, if you set your mind to it,” said Jenny, with a tight little smile. “You’ve only to think you’re stifling from the heat, and stifle you will!”

She bestowed a valedictory pat on Julia’s shoulder, and went away without giving her time to consider the implication of this remark. She was met on the floor below by Lady Oversley, who looked an anxious question. She replied to it with a nod, and a smile. “I didn’t say anything about her coming to dine with us, but she’ll drive out with me tomorrow, never fear! I’ll ask her then.”

Lady Oversley embraced her, shedding a few tears of relief. “Oh, my dear Jenny, I am so very much obliged to you! Was she — was she still in such distress?”

“That’s more than I can tell, ma’am,” replied Jenny, in her blunt way. “There’s no saying — at least, I can’t say, because we’re no more like than a dock and a daisy, and I don’t understand her, and never did. She thinks she is, and it has always seemed to me that she’s one of those who’d die of the influenza only because she took it into her head it was smallpox!”

This was rather beyond Lady Oversley, but when she presently recounted it to her lord he looked a good deal struck, and said that Jenny was shrewder than he had supposed. “That daughter of yours, my dear,” he said, “lives always in alt, and now we see what comes of it!”

She was accustomed to his very unfair habit of disclaiming responsibility for the existence of any of his children who had vexed him, so she let this pass, agreeing that Julia was too imaginative.

“Ay, she takes after you,” said his lordship inexcusably.

Julia remained in her bedchamber all day, but she appeared at the breakfast-table on the following morning. She looked pale, and was obviously in depressed spirits; and when her father, forcibly admonished by Lady Oversley, greeted her with great heartiness, she responded with a wince, and the travesty of a smile. But by a lucky chance a new walking-dress of French cambric, trimmed with frills of broad-lace, was sent home that day, and it was so pretty, particularly when worn with one of the new Oldenburg hats, that Julia was insensibly cheered. It had seemed at one moment as if she meant to refuse to drive with Jenny, but when she had been persuaded to put on the new dress, and her mama, her maid, her two younger sisters, and their governess had all fallen into raptures she changed her mind, and went out perfectly readily when the Lynton barouche drew up before the door.

Jenny, herself expensively but not very becomingly attired in Brunswick gray lustring, admired the dress too, and so, when they reached the Park, did a number of other persons. If the carriage was not mobbed, at least the coachman had to pull up his horses a great many times. It was the hour of the fashionable promenade, and the Park thronged with vehicles, from ladies’ barouches to the Corinthians’ curricles; with horsemen, mounted on high-bred hacks; and with exquisites, strolling along the path beside the roadway. It seemed to Jenny that every second person bowed or waved to her lovely companion, and since Julia wished to exchange greetings with her friends, and a large number of gentlemen were eager to pay homage to her, Jenny resigned herself to a dawdling progress. She had the satisfaction of receiving several civil acknowledgements herself, but she privately considered this promenade a waste of time, and was rather bored. It was otherwise with Julia, always responsive to atmosphere, and reviving like a thirsty plant under a shower of compliments and gallantries. The colour returned to her cheeks, the sparkle to her eyes, and her pretty laugh was so spontaneous that no one could have supposed her to be nursing a broken heart.

Not all her admirers were youthful. The Marquis of Rockhill, riding with Brough beside him, stayed for longer than any beside the barouche. He was very civil to Jenny, but she saw the warm glint in his eyes when he looked at Julia, and was not deceived into thinking that he had stopped for any other purpose than to talk to her. She thought him an elderly flirt for Julia, but she guessed him to be a notable conquest, and realized that his caressing manner was attractive to Julia. It was plain that he had a tendre for her, but he did not try to monopolize her. When Brough claimed her attention he at once began to talk to Jenny, and did not let hiseyes stray towards Julia while doing so, which she thought unusually polite. He was apparently well-acquainted with the Deveril family, and when Jenny disclosed that her mother-in-law would be in Grosvenor Street during the following week he said that he must call to pay his respects to her. “Such a very old friend — almost a cradle-friend, one might say!”

On an impulse, she said abruptly: “Would you care to dine with us?” She saw his brows lift in surprise, and