As for Mr. Cavendish, it would be very difficult to describe his feelings. He had been knocking about in all sorts of poor places, making clandestine visits to his sister, and hovering round the more than suburban simplicity of Grove Street, and the sense of being once more enveloped and surrounded by all that was pleasant to the eye and comfortable to the outer man was wonderfully consolatory and agreeable. But his mind was in a dreadfully harassed condition all the same. He was preoccupied to the last degree, wondering what Miss Marjoribanks really knew, and how far he had betrayed himself, and to what extent it would be safe, as she herself said, to confide in Lucilla; and at the same time he was obliged to listen to and show a certain interest in the General’s stories, and to make now and then a painful effort of mind to recall some of the mutual friends referred to, whose names and persons had in the meantime slipped out of his memory. All the babble of the club, which General Travers felt must be so refreshing to the ears of a rusticated member, fell as flat upon Mr. Cavendish, whose mind was full of other matters, as if it had been the merest old woman’s gossip, which, to be sure, it slightly resembled in some points. The gallant General made himself so agreeable that he nearly drove the unfortunate man out of his senses, and, when he had exhausted all other means of aggravation, returned with fresh zest to the sentimental circumstances in which, as he supposed, he had found his companion out.
“Very sensible I call it,” said General Travers. “To be candid, I don’t call her strictly handsome, you know; she’s too big for that—and I don’t suppose she’s of any family to speak of; though perhaps you don’t mind that trifling circumstance; but a woman that will dress well and light up well, and knows how to give a man a capital dinner, by Jove! and no doubt has a pretty little bit of money into the bargain—I respect your taste, Cavendish,” said the friendly critic, with effusion; and somehow this applause irritated its recipient more than all that had gone before.
“I am sure I am much obliged to you,” said Mr. Cavendish, “though, unfortunately, I don’t merit your approbation. Miss Marjoribanks is a great friend of mine, but she wouldn’t have me, and I don’t mean to ask her. At the same time, she has very good connections; and that is not the way to talk of a girl of twenty. She is worth a dozen of your fast young ladies,” said the sufferer, with some heat. He was not in the least in love with Lucilla, and indeed had a certain dread of her at this present moment; but he could not forget that she had once stood by him in his need—and, besides, he was glad of any subject on which he could contradict his visitor. “I dare say her family is better than either yours or mine. Scotch, you know,” said Mr. Cavendish, trying to laugh. As for the General, he leaned back on his chair with an indulgent air, and stroked his mustache.
“Beg your pardon—meant no offence,” he said. “For my part, I don’t see that it matters, if a woman is good-looking and has something, you know. For instance, there was a pretty little thing—a charming little thing—Lake, or something like that—”
“Ah!” said Mr. Cavendish. It was a frightful want of self-control; but he had been a long time at full strain, and he could not help it. It did not occur to him, for the moment, that nobody in his senses would have applied the term “little thing” to Barbara; and, after all the slow aggravation that he had been submitting to, the idea of this insolent soldier interfering in Grove Street was beyond his power of endurance. As for the General, the tone of this exclamation was such that he too turned round on his chair, and said, “Yes?” with equally unmistakable meaning, startled, but ready for the emergency, whatever it might be.
Thus the two looked at each other for a second, friends in the ordinary acceptation of the word, and yet, perhaps, on the eve of becoming enemies. Mr. Cavendish had, up to that moment, pretty nearly forgotten Barbara Lake. It was a piquant sort of occupation when he had nothing else to do, and when the world, according to his morbid fancy, was on the eve of turning its back upon him—but from the moment when he had said between his teeth “Confound these women!” and had felt the excitement of the approaching crisis, Barbara, and her crimson cheeks, and her level eyebrows, and her contralto, had gone altogether out of his mind. At the same time, it is quite true that a man may feel himself at liberty to forget a woman when other matters of more immediate interest are absorbing his attention, and yet be driven furious by the idea suddenly presented to him that somebody else, who has nothing earthly to do with it, is about to interfere. Mr. Cavendish, however, recovered himself while the General sat staring at him, and began to see how ridiculous his defiance was.
“Well?—go on. I did not say anything,” he said, and lighted another cigar. Yet he did
