'Don't flatter, sir.'
'Well, I most go to my aunt.'
He tarried to hear the welcome recital of all the kind deeds of the house of Conway. He presently found Lady Conway awaiting him in the drawing-room, and was greeted with great joy. 'That is well! I hoped to work on your father by telling him I did not approve of young men carrying industry too far-'
'That is not my habit.'
'Then it is your excuse for avoiding troublesome relations! No, not a word! I know nothing about the secret that occupied Isabel at Mrs. Ponsonby's select party. But I really wanted you. You are more au fait as to the society here than the Ponsonbys and Dynevors. Ah! when does that come off?'
'What is to come off?'
'Miss Ponsonby and Mr. Dynevor. What a good creature he is!'
'I cannot see much likelihood of it, but you are more on the scene of action.'
'She could do much better, with such expectations, but on his account I could not be sorry. It is shocking to think of that nice young sister being a governess. I think it a duty to give her every advantage that may tend to form her. With her connexions and education, I can have no objection to her as a companion to your cousins, and with a few advantages, though she will never be handsome, she might marry well. They are a most interesting family. Isabel and I are most anxious to do all in our power for them.'
'Clara is obliged,' said Louis, with undetected irony, but secret wonder at the dexterity with which the patronage must have been administered so as not to have made the interesting family fly off at a tangent.
Isabel made her appearance in her almost constant morning dress of soft dove-coloured merino entirely unadorned, and looking more like a maiden in a romance than ever. She had just left Adeline standing on the steps of a stone cross, exhorting the Provencals to arm against a descent of Moorish corsairs, and she held out her hand to Fitzjocelyn much as Adeline did, when the fantastic Viscount professed his intention of flying instead of fighting, and wanted her to sit behind him on his courser.
Lady Conway pronounced her council complete, and propounded the fete which she wished to give on the 12th of January in honour of Louisa's birthday. Isabel took up a pencil, and was lost in sketching wayside crosses, and vessels with lateen sails, only throwing in a word or two here and there when necessary. Dancing was still, Lady Conway feared, out of the question with Fitzjocelyn.
'And always will be, I suspect. So much for my bargain with Clara to dance with her at her first ball!'
'You like dancing?' exclaimed Isabel, rejoiced to find another resemblance to the fantastic Viscount.
'Last year's Yeomanry ball was the best fun in the world!'
'There, Isabel,' said Lady Conway, 'you ought to be gratified to find a young man candid enough to allow that he likes it! But since that cannot be, I must find some other plan-'
'What cannot be?' exclaimed Louis. 'You don't mean to omit the dancing-'
'It could not be enjoyed without you. Your cousins and friends could not bear to see you sitting down-'
Isabel's lips were compressed, and the foam of her waves laughed scornfully under her pencil.
'They must get accustomed to the melancholy spectacle,' said Louis. 'I do not mean to intermit the Yeomanry ball, if it take place while I am at home. The chaperons are the best company, after all. Reconsider it, my dear aunt, or you will keep me from coming at all.'
Lady Conway was only considering of tableaux, and Louis took fire at the notion: he already beheld Waverley in his beloved Yeomanry suit, Isabel as Flora, Clara as Davie Gellatley-the character she would most appreciate. Isabel roused herself to say that tableaux were very dull work to all save the actors, and soon were mere weariness to them. Her stepmother told her she had once been of a different mind, when she had been Isabel Bruce, kneeling in her cell, the ring before her. 'I was young enough then to think myself Isabel,' was her answer, and she drew the more diligently because Fitzjocelyn could not restrain an interjection, and a look which meant, 'What an Isabel she must have been!'
She sat passive while Lady Conway and Louis decked up a scene for Flora MacIvor; but presently it appeared that the Waverley of the piece was to be, according to Louis, not the proper owner of the Yeomanry uniform, but James Frost. His aunt exclaimed, and the rehearsals were strong temptation; but he made answer, 'No-you must not reckon on me: my father would not like it.'
The manful childishness, the childish manfulness of such a reply, were impenetrable. If his two-and-twenty years did not make him ashamed of saying so, nothing else could, and it covered a good deal. He knew that his father's fastidious pride would dislike his making a spectacle of himself, and thought that it would be presuming unkindly on to-day's liberty to involve himself in what would necessitate terms more intimate than were desired.
The luncheon silenced the consultation, which was to be a great secret from the children; but afterwards, when it was resumed, with the addition of James Frost, Fitzjocelyn was vexed to find the tableaux discarded; not avowedly because he excluded himself from a share, but because the style of people might not understand them. The entertainment was to be a Christmas-tree-not so hackneyed a spectacle in the year 1848 as in 1857-and Louis launched into a world of couplets for mottoes. Next came the question of guests, when Lady Conway read out names from the card-basket, and Fitzjocelyn was in favour of everybody, till Jem, after many counter-statements, assured Lady Conway that he was trying to fill her rooms with the most intolerable people in the world.
'My aunt said she wanted to give pleasure.'
'Ah! there's nothing so inconvenient to one's friends as good nature. Who cares for what is shared indiscriminately?'
'I don't think I can trust Fitzjocelyn with my visiting-list just yet,' said Lady Conway. 'You are too far above to be sensible of the grades beneath, with your place made for you.'
'Not at all,' said Louis. 'Northwold tea-parties were my earliest, most natural dissipation; and I spoke for these good people for my own personal gratification.'
'Nay, I can't consent to your deluding Lady Conway into Mrs. Walby.'
'If there be any one you wish me to ask, my dear Fitzjocelyn-' began Lady Conway.
'Oh no, thank you; Jem is quite right. I might have been playing on your unguarded innocence; but I am the worst person in the world to consult; for all the county and all the town are so kind to me, that I don't know whom I could leave out. Now, the Pendragon there will help you to the degree of gentility that may safely be set to consort together.'
'What an unkind fling!' thought Isabel.
Louis took leave, exclaiming to himself on the stairs, 'There! if comporting oneself like a donkey before the object be a token, I've done it efiectually. Didn't I know the exclusiveness of the woman? Yet, how could I help saying a word for the poor little Walbys? and, after all, if they were there, no one would speak to them but Aunt Kitty and I. And Isabel, I am sure she scorned the fastidious nonsense; I saw it in her eye and lip.'
After a quarter of an hour spent in hearing her praises from Miss Faithfull, he betook himself to Mrs. Ponsonby's, not quite without embarrassment, for he had not been alone with the mother and daughter since August.
'I am glad you did not come before,' said Mary, heartily; 'I have just done:' and she returned to her writing- table, while her mother was saying,
'We like it very much.'
'You have not been copying that wretched concern!' exclaimed Louis. 'Why, Mary, you must have been at it all night. It is a week's work.'
'Copying is not composing,' said Mary.
'But you have mended it, made it consecutive! If I had guessed that my father meant to trouble any one with it!'
'If you take pains with it, it may be very valuable,' said Mrs. Ponsonby. 'We have marked a few things that you had better revise before it goes to Oakstead.'
'Goes to Oakstead!' said Louis, faintly.
'Your father talks of sending it, to see if Sir Miles does not think it might tell well in one of the Reviews.'
'I hope not. I should lose all my faith in anonymous criticism, if they admitted such a crude undergraduate's omnium gatherum! Besides, what an immense task to make it presentable!'
'Is that the root of your humility?'
'Possibly. But for very shame I must doctor it, if Mary has wasted so much time over it. It does not look so bad
