brotherly feeling to be what you desire.'
'It would be the safest foundation.'
'Yes, if he were ten years older, and had seen the world; but in these things he is like a child, and it would be dangerous to influence him. Do not take it to heart; you ought to be contented, for I saw nothing so plainly as that he loves nobody half so well as you. Only be patient with him.'
'You are the same Mary as ever,' he said, softened; and she left him, hoping that she had secured a favourable audience for his son, who soon appeared at the window, somewhat like a culprit.
'I could not help it!' he said.
'No; but you may set a noble aim before you-you may render yourself worthy of her esteem and confidence, and in so doing you will fulfil my fondest hopes.'
'I asked her to try me, but they would make no conditions. I am sorry this could not be, since you wished it.'
'If you are not sorry on your own account, there are no regrets to be wasted on mine.'
'Candidly, father,' said Louis, 'much as I like her, I cannot be sorry to keep my youth and liberty a little longer.'
'Then you should never have entered on the subject at all,' said Lord Ormersfield, beginning to write a letter; and poor Louis, in his praiseworthy effort not to be reserved with him, found he had been confessing that he had not only been again making a fool of himself, but, what was less frequent and less pardonable, of his father likewise. He limped out at the window, and was presently found by his great-aunt, reading what he called a raving novel, to see how he ought to have done it. She shook her head at him, and told him that he was not even decently concerned.
'Indeed I am,' he replied. 'I wished my father to have had some peace of mind about me, and it does not flatter one's vanity.'
Dear, soft-hearted Aunt Kitty, with all her stores of comfort ready prepared, and unable to forgive, or even credit, the rejection of her Louis, without a prior attachment, gave a hint that this might be his consolation. He caught eagerly at the idea. 'I had never once thought of that! It can't be any Spaniard out in Peru-she has too much sense. What are you looking so funny about? What! is it nearer home? That's it, then! Famous! It would be a capital arrangement, if that terrible old father is conformable. What an escape I have had of him! I am sure it is a most natural and proper preference-'
'Stop! stop, Louis, you are going too fast. I know nothing. Don't say a word to Jem, on any account: indeed, you must not. It is all going on very well now; but the least notion that he was observed, or that it was his Uncle Oliver's particular wish, and there would be an end of it.'
She was just wise enough to keep back the wishes of the other vizier, but she had said enough to set Louis quite at his ease, and put him in the highest spirits. He seemed to have taken out a new lease of boyishness, and, though constrained before Mary, laughed, talked, and played pranks, so as unconsciously to fret his father exceedingly.
Clara's alert wits perceived that so many private interviews had some signification; and Mrs. Frost found her talking it over with her brother, and conjecturing so much, that granny thought it best to supply the key, thinking, perhaps, that a little jealousy would do Jem no harm. But the effect on him was to produce a fit of hearty laughter, as he remembered poor Lord Ormersfield's unaccountable urbanity and suppressed exultation in the morning's ride. 'I honour the Ponsonbys,' he said, 'for not choosing to second his lordship's endeavours to tyrannize over that poor fellow, body and soul. Poor Louis! he is fabulously dutiful.'
But Clara, recovering from her first stupor of wonder, began scolding him for presuming to laugh at anything so cruel to Louis. It was not the part of a friend! And with tears of indignation and sympathy starting from her eyes, she was pathetically certain that, though granny and Jem were so unfeeling as to laugh, his high spirits were only assumed to hide his suffering. 'Poor Louis! what had he not said to her about Mary last night! Now she knew what he meant! And as to Mary, she was glad she had never liked her, she had no patience with her: of course, she was far too prosy and stupid to care for anything like Louis, it was a great escape for him. It would serve her right to marry a horrid little crooked clerk in her father's office; and poor dear, dear Louis must get over it, and have the most beautiful wife in the world. Don't you remember, Jem, the lady with the splendid dark eyes on the platform at Euston Square, when you so nearly made us miss the train, with the brow that you said-'
'Hush, Clara, don't talk nonsense.'
CHAPTER XII. CHILDE ROLAND.
A house there is, and that's enough, From whence one fatal morning issues A brace of warriors, not in buff, But rustling in their silks and tissues. The heroines undertook the task; Thro' lanes unknown, o'er stiles they ventured,- Rapped at the door, nor stayed to ask, But bounce into the parlour entered. Gray's Long Story.
'No carmine? Nor scarlet lake in powder?'
'Could procure some, my Lord.'
'Thank you, the actinia would not live. I must take what I can find. A lump of gamboge-'
'If you stay much longer, he will not retain his senses,' muttered James Frost, who was leaning backwards against the counter, where the bewildered bookseller of the little coast-town of Bickleypool was bustling, in the vain endeavour to understand and fulfil the demands of that perplexing customer, Lord Fitzjocelyn.
'Some drawing-paper. This is hardly absorbent enough. If you have any block sketch-books?-'
'Could procure some, my Lord.'
James looked at his watch, while the man dived into his innermost recesses. 'The tide!' he said.
'Never mind, we shall only stick in the mud.'
'How could you expect to find anything here? A half-crown paint-box is their wildest dream.'
'Keep quiet, Jem, go and look out some of those library books, like a wise man.'
'A wise man would be at a loss here,' said James, casting his eye along the battered purple backs of the circulating-library books.
'Wisdom won't condescend! Ah! thank you, this will do nicely. Those colours-yes; and the Seaside Book. I'll choose one or two. What is most popular here?'
James began to whistle; but Louis, taking up a volume, became engrossed beyond the power of hints, and hardly stepped aside to make way for some ladies who entered the shop. A peremptory touch of the arm at length roused him, and holding up the book to the shopman, he put it into his pocket, seized his ash-stick, put his arm into his cousin's, and hastened into the street.
'Did you ever see-' began Jem.
'Most striking. I did not know you had met with her. What an idea- the false self conjuring up phantoms-'
'What are you talking of? Did you not see her?'
'Elizabeth Barrett. Was she there?'
'Is that her name? Do you know her?'
'I had heard of her, but never-'
'How?-where? Who is she?'
'I only saw her name in the title-page.'
'What's all this? You did not see her?'
'Who? Did not some ladies come into the shop?'
'Some ladies! Is it possible? Why, I touched you to make you look.'
'I thought it was your frenzy about the tide. What now?-'
James made a gesture of despair. 'The loveliest creature I ever saw. You may see her yet, as she comes out. Come back!'
'Don't be so absurd,' said Fitzjocelyn, laughing, and, with instinctive dislike of staring, resisting his cousin's effort to wheel him round. 'What, you will?' withdrawing his arm. 'I shall put off without you, if you don't take care.'
And, laughing, he watched Jem hurry up the sloping street and turn the corner, then turned to pursue his own way, his steps much less lame and his looks far more healthful than they had been a month before. He reached the quay-narrow, slippery, and fishy, but not without beauty, as the green water lapped against the hewn stones, and rocked the little boats moored in the wide bay, sheltered by a richly-wooded promontory. 'Jem in a fit of romance!
