“And he rewards her devotion by running away from her before the end of their honeymoon; and when he turns up again, after an interval of six months or so, during which nobody knows what he has been doing, she receives him with open arms. A curious couple assuredly. But an estate worth fourteen thousand pounds a year excuses a good deal of eccentricity; and I can quite understand that Mr. and Mrs. Treverton are immensely popular in the neighbourhood.”
“They are,” said Celia, warmly; “and they deserve to be. If you knew how good they are to their tenants, their servants, and the poor.”
“Goodness of that kind is a very sagacious investment, my unsophisticated child. It may cost a man five percent of his income, and it buys him respectability.”
“Don’t be bitter, Edward.”
“I am a man of the world, Celia, and not to be hoodwinked by shams and appearances.”
“Then you’ll never be a poet,” protested his sister. “A man who doesn’t believe that good deeds come from the hearts of men—a man who looks for an unworthy motive behind every generous action—such a man as that will never be a great poet. It is quite too dreadful to hear you talk, Edward. That odious London has corrupted you.”
Edward went to the dinner next day, but not with his family. He came alone, and rather late, in order to observe the effect of his entrance upon Laura Treverton. Alas, for his wounded vanity! She welcomed him with a frank smile and a friendly grasp of the hand.
“I am so glad you have come back in time to be with us tonight,” she said.
“I came back on purpose for tonight,” he answered, throwing as much tenderness as he could into a commonplace remark.
“I think you know everyone here. I need not introduce you.”
“I know the local magnates, of course. But I daresay there are some of your husband’s swell friends who are strangers to me.”
“There are none of my husband’s friends,” answered Laura, “we are strictly local.”
“Then I’m afraid you’ll find the evening rather uphill work.”
“I expect you to help me through it by the brilliancy of your conversation,” Laura answered, lightly, as Edward moved aside to make way for a new arrival.
He had contrived to make her uncomfortable for a minute or so, for that speech of his had set her wondering why her husband had no friends worth summoning to his side now that fortune smiled upon him.
The dinner party was not a very joyous festivity, but everybody felt, nevertheless, that it was a great social success. Lady Parker, in ruby velvet and diamonds, and Lady Barker in black satin and rubies, made two central lights round which the lesser planets revolved. There was the usual county and local talk; reprobation against the farming parson of a neighbouring parish for having treacherously trapped and slain four cub foxes since last season; cordial approval of a magistrate who had sent a lad of nine to jail for stealing three turnips, and who had been maligned and held up to ridicule by the radical newspapers for that necessary assertion of the rights of property; a good deal of discussion as to the prospects of the hunting season; a good deal of talk about horses and dogs, and a little about the outside world, and its chances of peace or war, famine or plenty. The party was too large for general conversation, but now and then the subdued Babel of tongues became concentrated here and there into a focus, and a gentle hush descended on a select few listening eagerly to a single talker. This happened oftenest at that part of the table near which Edward Clare was sitting, next but one to John Treverton. Mr. and Mrs. Treverton were seated opposite each other in the middle of the long table, with all the more important guests clustered about them in a constellation of local splendour, leaving the two ends of the table for youth and obscurity. Edward Clare had got himself into the constellation by a fluke; a portly justice of the peace having suddenly succumbed to gout, and sent an apology at the last moment; whereupon Laura had despatched Celia with a message to the butler, and had contrived that there should be a shuffling of cards, and that Edward Clare should be put into this place of honour.
She did this from a benevolent desire to soothe his wounded feeling, suspecting that there might be some soreness in his mind at this first meeting with her in her new character, and knowing that vanity made the larger half of this young man’s sensibility.
Edward had rewarded her by talking remarkably well. He was fresh from London, and well posted in all that is most interesting in the butterfly life of a London season. He told them all about the pictures of the year, let fly some sharp arrows of ridicule against the new school of painting, described the belle of the season, and let his hearers into the secret of her popularity.
“The curious part of the story,” he said, in conclusion, “is that nobody ever considered the lady pretty till she burst all at once upon society as the one perfect creature that the world had seen since the Venus was dug up at Milo. She never was thought so in her own world. No one was more surprised than her own family when she was elected queen of beauty, unless it was herself. Her mother never suspected it. At school she was considered rather plain than otherwise. They say she was married off early because she was the dowdy of the family, and now she cannot take her drive in the park without all London craning its neck and straining its eyes to get a look at her. When she goes into society the women stand upon chairs to stare at her over other people’s shoulders.
