'I shall see if Mrs. Lyddell will believe there is cause for alarm.'
The carriage was announced, she wished him good-bye again, thanked her cousins for her pleasant day, and departed, wondering to herself how it could have been a pleasant day, as after all it had been, in spite of doubt and anxiety and care.
She told Mrs. Lyddell when she came in, that she had seen Lionel.
'How were his eyes?' asked Caroline.
'I am afraid they were more dazzled than usual.'
No one said anything, and after a pause she went on. 'Edmund remarked a sort of indistinctness about the pupil, which he said was not a good sign.'
'What was that?' said Mr. Lyddell looking up, and Marian, startled, yet glad to have attracted his notice, repeated what she had said. 'Did not Wells look at his eyes last winter?' he said, turning to his wife.
'Yes, he said he could not see anything the matter with them--they must be spared--and he sent a mixture to bathe them. Lionel has been using it continually.'
'How would it be to have him up here to see some one?' said Mr. Lyddell.
'Better wait for the holidays,' answered his wife. 'It would be the worst thing possible to set him thinking, about his eyes in the middle of the half-year. Little as he does now, it would soon be less, and his eyes have kept him back so much already that he really cannot afford to lose any more time.'
There it ended, Mrs. Lyddell was not to be alarmed; she had been too long used to prosperity even to contemplate the possibility that harm should come nigh to her or to her dwelling. Mr. Lyddell, who left all family matters to her, forgot all about it, and though Marian talked Caroline into some fears on the subject, Caroline could do no more than she could herself.
Chapter XIII.
'Benedict. What, my dear Lady Disdain, are you yet living?'
'Beatrice. Is it possible Disdain should die while she has such meet food to feed her?'
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.
The Lyddell family did not continue in London much longer; it had been a short season, and though the session of Parliament was not over, most of the ladies were taking flight into the country, before the end of June,--Mrs. Lyddell among the rest,--and her husband went backwards and forwards to London, as occasion called him.
The girls were glad to get into the country, but Marian soon found that she had not escaped either from gaieties, or from the objects of her aversion; for Mr. Faulkner brought his mother and sisters to High Down House, gave numerous parties there, and made a constant interchange of civilities with the family at Oakworthy. Archery was pretty much the fashion with the young ladies that year; it was a sport which Marian liked particularly, having often practised it with Edmund and Agnes, and her bow and arrows were always the first to be ready.
One day when Marian, Caroline, and Clara were shooting on the lawn at Oakworthy, Mr. and Miss Faulkner rode from High Down, came out on the lawn, and joined them. From that moment, any one could see the change that came over Marian. Instead of laughing and talking, teaching Clara, and paying only half attention to her own shooting, she now went on as if it was her sole object, and as if she had no other purpose in life. She fixed her arrows and twanged her string with a rigidity as if the target had been a deadly enemy, or her whole fate was concentrated in hitting the bull's eye; and when her arrows went straight to the mark, or at least much straighter than those of any one else, she never turned her head, or vouchsafed more than the briefest answer to the exclamations around.
The others were talking of archery in general and in particular,--just what, if it had not been Mr. Faulkner, would have delighted her; but
