On the whole I think that Mrs. Arbuthnot was wrong. Mrs. Arbuthnot and the whole Staveley family would have regarded a mutual attachment between Mr. Graham and Madeline as a great family misfortune. The judge was a considerate father to his children, holding that a father’s control should never be brought to bear unnecessarily. In looking forward to the future prospects of his sons and daughters it was his theory that they should be free to choose their life’s companions for themselves. But nevertheless it could not be agreeable to him that his daughter should fall in love with a man who had nothing, and whose future success at his own profession seemed to be so very doubtful. On the whole I think that Mrs. Arbuthnot was wrong, and that the feeling that did exist in Madeline’s bosom might more possibly have died away, had no word been said about it—even by a sister.
And then another event happened which forced her to look into her own heart. Peregrine Orme did make his proposal. He waited patiently during those two or three days in which the doctor’s visits were frequent, feeling that he could not talk about himself while any sense of danger pervaded the house. But then at last a morning came on which the surgeon declared that he need not call again till the morrow; and Felix himself, when the medical back was turned, suggested that it might as well be tomorrow week. He began also to scold his friends, and look bright about the eyes, and drink his glass of sherry in a pleasant dinner-table fashion, not as if he were swallowing his physic. And Peregrine, when he saw all this, resolved that the moment had come for the doing of his deed of danger. The time would soon come at which he must leave Noningsby, and he would not leave Noningsby till he had learned his fate.
Lady Staveley, who with a mother’s eye had seen her daughter’s solicitude for Felix Graham’s recovery—had seen it, and animadverted on it to herself—had seen also, or at any rate had suspected, that Peregrine Orme looked on her daughter with favouring eyes. Now Peregrine Orme would have satisfied Lady Staveley as a son-in-law. She liked his ways and manners of thought—in spite of those rumours as to the rat-catching which had reached her ears. She regarded him as quite clever enough to be a good husband, and no doubt appreciated the fact that he was to inherit his title and The Cleeve from an old grandfather instead of a middle-aged father. She therefore had no objection to leave Peregrine alone with her one ewe-lamb, and therefore the opportunity which he sought was at last found.
“I shall be leaving Noningsby tomorrow, Miss Staveley,” he said one day, having secured an interview in the back drawing-room—in that happy half-hour which occurs in winter before the world betakes itself to dress. Now I here profess my belief, that out of every ten set offers made by ten young lovers, nine of such offers are commenced with an intimation that the lover is going away. There is a dash of melancholy in such tidings well suited to the occasion. If there be any spark of love on the other side it will be elicited by the idea of a separation. And then, also, it is so frequently the actual fact. This making of an offer is in itself a hard piece of business—a job to be postponed from day to day. It is so postponed, and thus that dash of melancholy, and that idea of separation are brought in at the important moment with so much appropriate truth.
“I shall be leaving Noningsby tomorrow, Miss Staveley,” Peregrine said.
“Oh dear! we shall be so sorry. But why are you going? What will Mr. Graham and Augustus do without you? You ought to stay at least till Mr. Graham can leave his room.”
“Poor Graham!—not that I think he is much to be pitied either; but he won’t be about for some weeks to come yet.”
“You do not think he is worse; do you?”
“Oh, dear, no; not at all.” And Peregrine was unconsciously irritated against his friend by the regard which her tone evinced. “He is quite well; only they will not let him be moved. But, Miss Staveley, it was not of Mr. Graham that I was going to speak.”
“No—only I thought he would miss you so much.” And then she blushed, though the blush in the dark of the evening was lost upon him. She remembered that she was not to speak about Felix Graham’s health, and it almost seemed as though Mr. Orme had rebuked her for doing so in saying that he had not come there to speak of him.
“Lady Staveley’s house has been turned up side down since this affair, and it is time now that some part of the trouble should cease.”
“Oh! mamma does not mind it at all.”
“I know how good she is; but nevertheless, Miss Staveley, I must go tomorrow.” And then he paused a moment before he spoke again. “It will depend entirely upon you,” he said, “whether I may have the happiness of returning soon to Noningsby.”
“On me, Mr. Orme!”
“Yes, on you. I do not know how to speak properly that which I have to say; but I believe I may as well say it out at once. I have come here now to tell you that I love you and to ask you to be my wife.” And then he stopped as though there were nothing more for him to say upon the matter.
It would be hardly extravagant to declare that Madeline’s breath was taken away by the very sudden manner in which young Orme had made his proposition. It had never entered her head that she had an admirer in him. Previously to Graham’s accident she had thought nothing about him. Since that
