On talked and walked the cousins, over the downs, which had certainly never been trodden by happier people. At last they recollected that they must return, if they wished to be in time for the post, and retraced their steps, talking as eagerly as ever. As they were coming near the house, Marian said, 'Does Gerald know?'
'Not yet; I shall write to him to-morrow.'
'Is it to be a secret? Of course I should say nothing about it while you are here, but may I mention it afterwards?'
'They said nothing about secrecy,' said Edmund; 'in fact I think attempting it, only results in making one look foolish. Yes, you are welcome to tell whom you please as soon as I am out of the way. I had rather the Lyddells know.'
'Very well; indeed, I don't think I can keep it to myself, it is too much joy.'
'Do you expect them to participate in your pleasure at making your escape from them?'
'There is no one to miss me, except, perhaps, Lionel, a little, when his eyes are bad. Caroline would once have cared, but that is over now, poor thing! There never was a time when I should have been more glad to get away. O, Edmund, if you would do one thing to oblige me, it would be, to have your wedding the same day as Caroline's, that I might not be obliged to be at it.'
'At which?'
'O, you know!'
'Is it such a very bad affair?'
'O, I am very much grieved about it. The man has no religion at all, you know; at least, if he has any, it is all natural religion,--anything but the truth.'
'Do you really mean that the family have accepted him, allowed this to go on, knowing such things of him?'
'I don't know how far they see it. I don't think they allow it to themselves, and I don't think they would understand some of it; as, for instance, when I heard him talking the other day as if he assumed that Christianity was only a development of people's tendency to believe,--as fleeting as other forms of faith. It was not very broadly stated, and I don't think I should have seen it, if it had not chimed in with something I had read; and, besides, I knew what was in the man.'
'How do you know? Not from your own observation?'
'O, no, no; I liked him at first. I could have liked him very much, if Lord Marchmont had not told me about him, and then I had the key to him.'
'And this poor Miss Lyddell?'
'She knew what I did,' said Marian, sadly. 'But he is very agreeable,--at least he is thought so,--and they all admired him so much, and paid such court to him, that--Yet I did think better things of Caroline. Lionel is the only one who has found him out, and he thinks of it just as I do, O, Edmund, I am sure you would like Lionel.'
'How are his eyes?' asked Edmund, as they were coming under the portico, and could not talk of any of the more delicate subjects. 'I thought Gerald gave a very bad account of them; indeed, I scarcely expected that he could have gone back to Eton.'
'I sometimes think,' almost whispered Marian, 'that it is not he, poor boy, whose eyes are the worst in the house; but Mrs. Lyddell's head has been so full of Johnny, and Caroline, and all she has to do, that she will not see anything amiss with Lionel.'
'He must be a boy of a great deal of resolution and principle, to have struggled on as he has clone, by Gerald's account. Ah! I meant to have told you about Gerald, but all our time is gone.'
