The captain was sharp-sighted enough to observe the change in her manner. The change, indeed, was visible enough, and was such that it at once knocked out of Archie’s breast some portion of the courage with which his friend’s lessons had inspired him. The outstretched hand fell slowly to her side, the smile gave place to a look of composed dignity which made Archie at once feel that the fate which called upon him to woo a countess was in itself hard. And she walked slowly into the room before she spoke to him, or he to her.
“Captain Clavering!” she said at last, and there was much more of surprise than of welcome in her words as she uttered them.
“Yes, Lady On—, Julia, that is; I thought I might as well come and call, as I found we weren’t to see you at Clavering when we were all there at Easter.” When she had been living in his brother’s house as one of the family he had called her Julia, as Hugh had done. The connection between them had been close, and it had come naturally to him to do so. He had thought much of this since his present project had been initiated, and had strongly resolved not to lose the advantage of his former familiarity. He had very nearly broken down at the onset, but, as the reader will have observed, had recovered himself.
“You are very good,” she said; and then as he had been some time standing with his right hand presented to her, she just touched it with her own.
“There’s nothing I hate so much as stuff and nonsense,” said Archie. To this remark she simply bowed, remaining awfully quiet. Captain Clavering felt that her silence was in truth awful. She had always been good at talking, and he had paused for her to say something; but when she bowed to him in that stiff manner—“doosed stiff she was; doosed stiff, and impudent too,” he told Doodles afterwards;—he knew that he must go on himself. “Stuff and nonsense is the mischief, you know.” Then she bowed again. “There’s been something the matter with them all down at Clavering since you came home, Julia; but hang me if I can find out what it is!” Still she was silent. “It ain’t Hermy; that I must say. Hermy always speaks of you as though there had never been anything wrong.” This assurance, we may say, must have been flattering to the lady whom he was about to court.
“Hermy was always too good to me,” said Lady Ongar, smiling.
“By George, she always does. If there’s anything wrong it’s been with Hugh; and, by George, I don’t know what it is he was up to when you first came home. It wasn’t my doing;—of course you know that.”
“I never thought that anything was your doing, Captain Clavering.”
“I think Hugh had been losing money; I do indeed. He was like a bear with a sore head just at that time. There was no living in the house with him. I daresay Hermy may have told you all about that.”
“Hermione is not by nature so communicative as you are, Captain Clavering.”
“Isn’t she? I should have thought between sisters—; but of course that’s no business of mine.” Again she was silent, awfully silent, and he became aware that he must either get up and go away or carry on the conversation himself. To do either seemed to be equally difficult, and for a while he sat there almost gasping in his misery. He was quite aware that as yet he had not made her know that he was there. He was not there, as he well knew, in his friend Doodles’ sense of the word. “At any rate there isn’t any good in quarrelling, is there, Julia?” he said at last. Now that he had asked a question, surely she must speak.
“There is great good sometimes I think,” said she, “in people remaining apart and not seeing each other. Sir Hugh Clavering has not quarrelled with me, that I am aware. Indeed, since my marriage there have been no means of quarrelling between us. But I think it quite as well that he and I should not come together.”
“But he particularly wants you to go to Clavering.”
“Has he sent you here as his messenger?”
“Sent me! oh dear no; nothing of that sort. I have come altogether on my
