“It is nothing—nothing at all,” said Miss Dora: “it was not Frank’s doing in the least; he is always so considerate, and such a dear fellow. Thank you, my dear boy; my head is a little better; I think I will go in and lie down,” said the unlucky aunt. “You are not to mind me now, for I have quite got over my little attack; I always was so nervous,” said Miss Dora; “and I sometimes wonder whether it isn’t the Wentworth complaint coming on,” she added, with a natural female artifice which was not without its effect.
“I wish you would not talk nonsense,” said the Squire. “The Wentworth complaint is nothing to laugh at, but you are perfectly aware that it never attacks women.” Mr. Wentworth spoke with a little natural irritation, displeased to have his prerogative interfered with. When a man has all the suffering attendant upon a special complaint, it is hard not to have all the dignity. He felt so much and so justly annoyed by Miss Dora’s vain pretensions, that he forgot his anxiety about the secret conference in the summerhouse. “Women take such fantastic ideas into their heads,” he said to his son as they went away together. “Your aunt Dora is the kindest soul in the world; but now and then, sir, she is very absurd,” said the Squire. He could not get this presumptuous notion out of his head, but returned to it again and again, even after they had got into Grange Lane. “It has been in our family for two hundred years,” said Mr. Wentworth; “and I don’t think there is a single instance of its attacking a woman—not even slightly, sir,” the Squire added, with irritation, as if Frank had taken the part of the female members of the family, which indeed the Curate had no thought of doing.
Miss Dora, for her part, having made this very successful diversion, escaped to the house, and to her own room, where she indulged in a headache all the afternoon, and certain tender recollections which were a wonderful resource at all times to the softhearted woman. “Oh, my dear boy, don’t be over-persuaded,” she had whispered into Frank’s ear as she left him; and her remonstrance, simple as it was, had no doubt produced a considerable effect upon the mind of the Perpetual Curate. He could not help thinking, as they emerged into the road, that it was chiefly the impatient and undutiful who secured their happiness. Those who were constant and patient, and able to deny themselves, instead of being rewarded for their higher qualities, were, on the contrary, put to the full test of the strength that was in them; while those who would not wait attained what they wanted, and on the whole, as to other matters, got on just as well as their stronger-minded neighbours. This germ of thought, it may be supposed, was stimulated into very warm life by the reflection that Lucy would have to leave Carlingford with her sister, without any definite prospect of returning again; and a certain flush of impatience came over the young man, not unnatural in the circumstances. It seemed to him that everybody else took their own way without waiting; and why should it be so certain that he alone, whose “way” implied harm to no one, should be the only man condemned to wait? Thus it will be seen that the “just one thing” insisted on by Miss Dora was far from being without effect on the mind of her nephew; upon whom, indeed, the events of the morning had wrought various changes of sentiment. When he walked up Grange Lane for the first time, it had been without any acknowledged intention of opening his mind to Lucy, and yet he had returned along the same prosaic and unsympathetic line of road her accepted lover; her accepted lover, triumphant in that fact, but without the least opening of any hope before him as to the conclusion of the engagement, which prudence had no hand in making. Now the footsteps of the Perpetual Curate fell firmly, not to say a little impatiently, upon the road over which he had carried so many varying thoughts. He was as penniless as ever, and as prospectless; but in the tossings of his natural impatience the young man had felt the reins hang loosely about his head, and knew that he was no more restrained than other men, but might, if he chose it, have his way like the rest of the world. It was true enough that he might have to pay for it after, as other people had done; but in the meantime the sense that he was his own master was sweet, and to have his will for once seemed no more than his right in the world. While these rebellious thoughts were going on in the Curate’s mind, his father, who suspected nothing, went steadily by his side, not without a little reluctance at the thought of the errand on which he was bound. “But they can’t marry for years, and nobody can tell what may happen in that time,”
