“He is not my Mr. Glascock, mamma,” said Nora, smiling.
“You know what I mean, dear.” Lady Rowley had not intended to utter a word that should appear like pressure on her daughter at this moment. She had felt how imprudent it would be to do so. But now Nora seemed to be leading the way herself to such discourse. “Of course, he is not your Mr. Glascock. You cannot eat your cake and have it, nor can you throw it away and have it.”
“I have thrown my cake away altogether, and certainly I cannot have it.” She was still smiling as she spoke, and seemed to be quite merry at the idea of regarding Mr. Glascock as the cake which she had declined to eat.
“I can see one thing quite plainly, dear.”
“What is that, mamma?”
“That in spite of what you have done, you can still have your cake whenever you choose to take it.”
“Why, mamma, he is engaged to be married!”
“Mr. Glascock?”
“Yes, Mr. Glascock. It’s quite settled. Is it not sad?”
“To whom is he engaged?” Lady Rowley’s solemnity as she asked this question was piteous to behold.
“To Miss Spalding—Caroline Spalding.”
“The eldest of those nieces?”
“Yes;—the eldest.”
“I cannot believe it.”
“Mamma, they both told me so. I have sworn an eternal friendship with her already.”
“I did not see you speaking to her.”
“But I did talk to her a great deal.”
“And he is really going to marry that dreadful woman?”
“Dreadful, mamma!”
“Perfectly awful! She talked to me in a way that I have read about in books, but which I did not before believe to be possible. Do you mean that he is going to be married to that hideous old maid—that bell-clapper?”
“Oh, mamma, what slander! I think her so pretty.”
“Pretty!”
“Very pretty. And, mamma, ought I not to be happy that he should have been able to make himself so happy? It was quite, quite, quite impossible that I should have been his wife. I have thought about it ever so much, and I am so glad of it! I think she is just the girl that is fit for him.”
Lady Rowley took her candle and went to bed, professing to herself that she could not understand it. But what did it signify? It was, at any rate, certain now that the man had put himself out of Nora’s reach, and if he chose to marry a republican virago, with a red nose, it could now make no difference to Nora. Lady Rowley almost felt a touch of satisfaction in reflecting on the future misery of his married life.
LXXVIII
Casalunga
Sir Marmaduke had been told at the Florence post-office that he would no doubt be able to hear tidings of Trevelyan, and to learn his address, from the officials in the post-office at Siena. At Florence he had been introduced to some gentleman who was certainly of importance—a superintendent who had clerks under him and who was a big man. This person had been very courteous to him, and he had gone to Siena thinking that he would find it easy to obtain Trevelyan’s address—or to learn that there was no such person there. But at Siena he and his courier together could obtain no information. They rambled about the huge cathedral and the picturesque marketplace of that quaint old city for the whole day, and on the next morning after breakfast they returned to Florence. They had learned nothing. The young man at the post-office had simply protested that he knew nothing of the name of Trevelyan. If letters should come addressed to such a name, he would keep them till they were called for; but, to the best of his knowledge, he had never seen or heard the name. At the guardhouse of the gendarmerie they could not, or would not, give him any information, and Sir Marmaduke came back with an impression that everybody at Siena was ignorant, idiotic, and brutal. Mrs. Trevelyan was so dispirited as to be ill, and both Sir Marmaduke and Lady Rowley were disposed to think that the world was all against them. “You have no conception of the sort of woman that man is going to marry,” said Lady Rowley.
“What man?”
“Mr. Glascock! A horrid American female, as old almost as I am, who talks through her nose, and preaches sermons about the rights of women. It is incredible! And Nora might have had him just for lifting up her hand.” But Sir Marmaduke could not interest himself much about Mr. Glascock. When he had been told that his daughter had refused the heir to a great estate and a peerage, it had been matter of regret; but he had looked upon the affair as done, and cared nothing now though Mr. Glascock should marry a transatlantic Xantippe. He was angry with Nora because by her obstinacy she was adding to the general perplexities of the family, but he could not make comparisons on Mr. Glascock’s behalf between her and Miss Spalding—as his wife was doing, either mentally or aloud, from hour to hour. “I suppose it is too late now,” said Lady Rowley, shaking her head.
“Of course it is too
