themselves once more in full sympathy; while he poured out all that had been pent up ever since his winter at Rockpier. She almost made common cause with him in the question, what would Raymond say? And it proved to be news to her that her eldest son was to be immediately expected at home. Cecil had not come to see her, and had sent her no message; but ungracious inattention was not so uncommon as to excite much remark from one who never wished to take heed to it; and it was soon forgotten in the praise of Eleonora.
Cecil meanwhile was receiving Raymond at the station. He was pleased to see her there in her pony-carriage, but a little startled by the brief coldness of her reply to his inquiry after his mother, and the tight compression of her lips all the time they were making their way through the town, where, as usual, he was hailed every two or three minutes by persons wanting a word with him. When at last there was a free space, she began: 'Raymond, I wish to know whether you mean me to be set at naught, and my friends deliberately insulted?'
'What?'
A gentleman here hurried up with 'I'll not detain you a minute.'
He did, however, keep them for what seemed a great many, to the chafing spirit which thought a husband should have no ears save for his wife's wrongs; so she made her preface even more startling- 'Raymond, I cannot remain in the house any longer with Lady Rosamond Charnock and those intolerable brothers of hers!'
'Perhaps you will explain yourself,' said Raymond, almost relieved by the evident exaggeration of the expressions.
'There has been a conspiracy to thwart and insult me-a regular conspiracy!'
'Cecil! let me understand you. What can have happened?'
'When I arranged an evening for my friends to meet Mrs. Tallboys, I did not expect to have it swamped by a pack of children, and noisy nonsensical games, nor that both she and I should be insulted by practical jokes and a personal charade.'
'A party to meet Mrs. Tallboys?'
'A ladies' party, a conversazione.'
'What-by my mother's wish?'
'I was given to understand that I had carte blanche in visiting matters.'
'You did not ask her consent?'
'I saw no occasion.'
'You did not?'
'No.'
'Then, Cecil, I must say that whatever you may have to complain of, you have committed a grave act of disrespect.'
'I was told that I was free to arrange these things!'
'Free!' said Raymond, thoroughly roused; 'free to write notes, and order the carriage, and play lady of the house; but did you think that made you free to bring an American mountebank of a woman to hold forth absurd trash in my mother's own drawing-room, as soon as my back was turned?'
'I should have done the same had you been there.'
'Indeed!' ironically; 'I did not know how far you had graduated in the Rights of Women. So you invited these people?'
'Then the whole host of children was poured in on us, and everything imaginable done to interrupt, and render everything rational impossible. I know it was Rosamond's contrivance, she looked so triumphant, dressed in an absurd fancy dress, and her whole train doing nothing but turning me into ridicule, and Mrs. Tallboys too. Whatever you choose to call her, you cannot approve of a stranger and foreigner being insulted here. It is that about which I care- not myself; I have seen none of them since, nor shall I do so until a full apology has been made to my guest and to myself.'
'You have not told me the offence.'
'In the first place, there was an absurd form of Christmas-tree, to which one was dragged blindfold, and sedulously made ridiculous; and I-I had a dust-pan and brush. Yes, I had, in mockery of our endeavours to purify that unhappy street.'
'I should have taken it as a little harmless fun,' said Raymond. 'Depend on it, it was so intended.'
'What, when Mrs. Tallboys had a padlock and key? I see you are determined to laugh at it all. Most likely they consulted you beforehand.'
'Cecil, I cannot have you talk such nonsense. Is this all you have to complain of?'
'No. There was a charade on the word Blockhead, where your brother Charles and the two De Lanceys caricatured what they supposed to be Mrs. Tallboys' doctrines.'
'How did she receive it?'
'Most good-humouredly; but that made it no better on their part.'
'Are you sure it was not a mere ordinary piece of pleasantry, with perhaps a spice of personality, but nothing worth resenting?'
'You did not see it. Or perhaps you think no indignity towards me worth resentment?'
'I do not answer that, Cecil; you will think better of those words another time,' said Raymond, sternly. 'But when you want your cause taken up, you have to remember that whatever the annoyance, you brought it upon yourself and her, by your own extraordinary proceeding towards my mother-I will not say towards myself. I will try to smooth matters. I think the De Lanceys must have acted foolishly; but the first step ought to be an expression of regret for such conduct towards my mother.'
'I cannot express regret. I ought to have been told if there were things forbidden.'
'Must I forbid your playing Punch and Judy, or dancing on the tight-rope?' cried Raymond, exasperated.
Cecil bit her lip, and treated the exclamation with the silent dignity of a deeply injured female; and thus they reached home, when Raymond said, 'Come to your senses, Cecil and apologize to my mother. You can explain that you did not know the extent of your powers.'
'Certainly not. They all plotted against me, and I am the person to whom apology is due.'
Wherewith she marched up-stairs, leaving Raymond, horribly perplexed, to repair at once to his mother's room, where Frank still was; but after replying about his success in the examination, the younger brother retreated, preferring that his story should be told by his mother; but she had not so much as entered on it when Raymond demanded what had so much disturbed Cecil.
'I was afraid she would be vexed,' said Mrs. Poynsett; 'but we were in a difficulty. We thought she hardly knew what she had been led into, and that as she had invited her ladies, it would do less harm to change the character of the party than to try to get it given up.'
'I have no doubt you did the best you could,' said Raymond, speaking with more like censure of his mother than he had ever done since the hot days of his love for Camilla Vivian; 'and you could have had nothing to do with the personalities that seem to have been the sting.'
Mrs. Poynsett, true boy-lover that she was, had been informed of the success of Tom's naughtiness-not indeed till after it was over, when there was nothing to be done but to shake her head and laugh; and now she explained so that her son came to a better understanding of what had happened.
As to the extinguishing Women's Rights in child's play, he saw that it had been a wise manoeuvre of his mother, to spare any appearance of dissension, while preventing what she disapproved and what might have injured his interests; but he was much annoyed with the De Lanceys for having clogged the measure with their own folly; and judging of cause by effect, he would hear of no excuse for Rosamond or her brothers, and went away resolved that though nothing should induce him to quarrel with Julius, yet he should tell him plainly that he must restrain his wife and her brothers from annoying Cecil by their practical jokes. He was, as usual, perfectly gentle to his mother, and thanked her for her arrangement. 'It was not her fault that it had not turned out better,' he said; and he did not seem to hear her exoneration of Rosamond.
He had scarcely gone when Rosamond came in from the village, asking whether he had arrived, as she had seen his hat in the hall.
'Yes, Rosamond. You did not tell me of Cecil's vexation!'
'Cecil? Have I seen her since? No, I remember now. But is she angry? Was it the dust-pan? Oh! Tom, Tom!'
'That and the Blockhead. Did Tom say anything very cutting?'
'Why it was an old stock charade they acted two years ago! I had better tell her so.'
