the evening. She took the opportunity of going over some fine old airs, which the exigencies of drawing-room display had prevented her from practising for some time. Presently she found him standing by her, his face softer than usual. 'Where did you get that, Phoebe?'
'It is Haydn's. I learnt it just after Miss Fennimore came.'
'Play it again; I have not heard it for years.'
She obeyed, and looked at him. He was shading his face with his hand, but he hardly spoke again all the rest of the evening.
Phoebe's curiosity was roused, and she tried the effect of the air on her mother, whose great pleasure was her daughter's music, since a piano had been moved into her dressing-room. But it awoke no association there, and 'Thank you, my dear,' was the only requital.
While the next evening she was wondering whether to volunteer it, Mervyn begged for it, and as she finished, asked, 'What does old Gay say of my mother now?'
'He thinks her decidedly better, and so I am sure she is. She has more appetite. She really ate the breast of a partridge to-day!'
'He says nothing of a change?'
'She could not bear the journey.'
'It strikes me that she wants rousing. Shut up in a great lonely house like this, she has nothing cheerful to look at. She would be much better off at Brighton, or some of those places where she could see people from the windows, and have plenty of twaddling old dowager society.'
'I did ask Mr. Gay about the sea, but he thought the fatigue of the journey, and the vexing her by persuading her to take it, would do more harm than the change would do good.'
'I did not mean only as a change. I believe she would be much happier living there, with this great place off her hands. It is enough to depress any one's spirits to live in a corner like a shrivelled kernel in a nut.'
'Go away!' exclaimed Phoebe. 'Mervyn! it is her home! It is her own!'
'Well, I never said otherwise,' he answered, rather crossly; 'but you know very well that it is a farce to talk of her managing the house, or the estate either. It was bad enough before, but there will be no check on any one now.'
'I thought you looked after things.'
'Am I to spend my life as a steward? No, if the work is to be in my hands, I ought to be in possession at once, so as to take my place in the county as I ought, and cut the City business. The place is a mere misfortune and encumbrance to her as she is, and she would be ten times happier at a watering-place.'
'Mervyn, what do you mean? You have all the power and consequence here, and are fully master of all; but why should not poor mamma live in her own house?'
'Can't you conceive that a man may have reasons for wishing to be put in possession of the family place when he can enjoy it, and she can't? Don't look at me with that ridiculous face. I mean to marry. Now, can't you see that I may want the house to myself?'
'You are engaged!'
'Not exactly. I am waiting to see my way through the bother.'
'Who is it? Tell me about it, Mervyn.'
'I don't mind telling you, but for your life don't say a word to any one. I would never forgive you, if you set my Ladies Bannerman and Acton at me.'
Phoebe was alarmed. She had little hope that their likings would coincide; his manner indicated defiance of opinion, and she could not but be averse to a person for whose sake he wished to turn them out. 'Well,' was all she could say, and he proceeded: 'I suppose you never heard of Cecily Raymond.'
'Of Moorcroft?' she asked, breathing more freely. 'Sir John's daughter?'
'No, his niece. It is a spooney thing to take up with one's tutor's daughter, but it can't be helped. I've tried to put her out of my head, and enter on a more profitable speculation, but it won't work!'
'Is she very pretty-prettier than Lucilla Sandbrook?' asked Phoebe, unable to believe that any other inducement could attach him.
'Not what you would call pretty at all, except her eyes. Not a bit fit to make a figure in the world, and a regular little parsoness. That's the deuce of it. It would be mere misery to her to be taken to London and made to go into society; so I want to have it settled, for if she could come here and go poking into cottages and schools, she would want nothing more.'
'Then she is very good?'
'You and she will be devoted to each other. And you'll stand up for her, I know, and then a fig for their two ladyships. You and I can be a match for Juliana, if she tries to bully my mother. Not that it matters. I am my own man now; but Cecily is crotchety, and must not be distressed.'
'Then I am sure she would not like to turn mamma out,' said Phoebe, stoutly.
'Don't you see that is the reason I want to have it settled beforehand. If she were a party to it, she would never consent; she would be confoundedly scrupulous, and we should be all worried to death. Come, you just sound my mother; you can do anything with her, and it will be better for you all. You will be bored to death here, seeing no one.'
'I do not know whether it be a right proposal to make.'
'Right? If the place had been my father's, it would be a matter of course.'
'That makes the whole difference. And even so, would not this be very soon?'
'Of course you know I am proposing nothing at once. It would not be decent, I suppose, to marry within the half-year; but, poor little thing, I can't leave her in suspense any longer. You should not have played that thing.'
'Then you know that she cares for you?'
He laughed consciously at this home question.
'It must be a long time since you were at Mr. Raymond's.'
'Eight years; but I have made flying visits there since, and met her at her uncle's. Poor little thing, she was horribly gone off last time, and very ungracious, but we will find a remedy!'
'Then you could not gain consent to it?'
'It never came to that. I never committed myself.'
'But why not? If she was so good, and you liked her, and they all wanted you to marry, I can't see why you waited, if you knew, too, that she liked you-I don't think it was kind, Mervyn.'
'Ah! women always hang by one another. See here, Phoebe, it began when I was as green as yourself, a mere urchin, and she a little unconscious thing of the same age. Well, when I got away, I saw what a folly it was-a mere throwing myself away! I might have gone in for rank or fortune, as I liked; and how did I know that I was such a fool that I could not forget her? If Charles Charteris had not monopolized the Jewess, I should have been done for long ago! And apart from that, I wasn't ready for domestic joys, especially to be Darby to such a pattern little Joan, who would think me on the highway to perdition if she saw
'You can't have any affection for her,' cried Phoebe, indignantly.
'Didn't I tell you she spoilt the taste of every other transaction of the sort? And what am I going to do now? When she has not a halfpenny, and I might marry anybody!'
'If you cared for her properly, you would have done it long before.'
'I'm a dutiful son,' he answered, in an indifferent voice, that provoked Phoebe to say with spirit, 'I hope she does not care for you, after all.'
'Past praying for, kind sister. Sincerely I've been sorry for it; I would have disbelieved it, but the more she turns away, the better I know it; so you see, after all, I shall deserve to be ranked with your hero, Bevil Acton.'
'Mervyn, you make me so angry that I can hardly answer! You boast of what you think she has suffered for you all this time, and make light of it!'
'It wasn't my fault if my poor father would send such an amiable youth into a large family. Men with daughters should not take pupils. I did my best to cure both her and myself, but I had better have fought it out at once when she was younger and prettier, and might have been more conformable, and not so countrified, as you'll grow, Phoebe, if you stay rusting here, nursing my mother and reading philosophy with Miss Fennimore. If you set up to scold me, you had better make things easy for me.'
