Elfride merely listened and said nothing.
He continued more quietly and impressively. “Yes, Elfride, she is wealthy in comparison with us, though with few connections. However, she will introduce you to the world a little. We are going to exchange her house in Baker Street for one at Kensington, for your sake. Everybody is going there now, she says. At Easters we shall fly to town for the usual three months—I shall have a curate of course by that time. Elfride, I am past love, you know, and I honestly confess that I married her for your sake. Why a woman of her standing should have thrown herself away upon me, God knows. But I suppose her age and plainness were too pronounced for a town man. With your good looks, if you now play your cards well, you may marry anybody. Of course, a little contrivance will be necessary; but there’s nothing to stand between you and a husband with a title, that I can see. Lady Luxellian was only a squire’s daughter. Now, don’t you see how foolish the old fancy was? But come, she is indoors waiting to see you. It is as good as a play, too,” continued the vicar, as they walked towards the house. “I courted her through the privet hedge yonder: not entirely, you know, but we used to walk there of an evening—nearly every evening at last. But I needn’t tell you details now; everything was terribly matter-of-fact, I assure you. At last, that day I saw her at Stratleigh, we determined to settle it offhand.”
“And you never said a word to me,” replied Elfride, not reproachfully either in tone or thought. Indeed, her feeling was the very reverse of reproachful. She felt relieved and even thankful. Where confidence had not been given, how could confidence be expected?
Her father mistook her dispassionateness for a veil of politeness over a sense of ill-usage. “I am not altogether to blame,” he said. “There were two or three reasons for secrecy. One was the recent death of her relative the testator, though that did not apply to you. But remember, Elfride,” he continued in a stiffer tone, “you had mixed yourself up so foolishly with those low people, the Smiths—and it was just, too, when Mrs. Troyton and myself were beginning to understand each other—that I resolved to say nothing even to you. How did I know how far you had gone with them and their son? You might have made a point of taking tea with them every day, for all that I knew.”
Elfride swallowed her feelings as she best could, and languidly though flatly asked a question.
“Did you kiss Mrs. Troyton on the lawn about three weeks ago? That evening I came into the study and found you had just had candles in?”
Mr. Swancourt looked rather red and abashed, as middle-aged lovers are apt to do when caught in the tricks of younger ones.
“Well, yes; I think I did,” he stammered; “just to please her, you know.” And then recovering himself he laughed heartily.
“And was this what your Horatian quotation referred to?”
“It was, Elfride.”
They stepped into the drawing-room from the verandah. At that moment Mrs. Swancourt came downstairs, and entered the same room by the door.
“Here, Charlotte, is my little Elfride,” said Mr. Swancourt, with the increased affection of tone often adopted towards relations when newly produced.
Poor Elfride, not knowing what to do, did nothing at all; but stood receptive of all that came to her by sight, hearing, and touch.
Mrs. Swancourt moved forward, took her stepdaughter’s hand, then kissed her.
“Ah, darling!” she exclaimed good-humouredly, “you didn’t think when you showed a strange old woman over the conservatory a month or two ago, and explained the flowers to her so prettily, that she would so soon be here in new colours. Nor did she, I am sure.”
The new mother had been truthfully enough described by Mr. Swancourt. She was not physically attractive. She was dark—very dark—in complexion, portly in figure, and with a plentiful residuum of hair in the proportion of half a dozen white ones to half a dozen black ones, though the latter were black indeed. No further observed, she was not a woman to like. But there was more to see. To the most superficial critic it was apparent that she made no attempt to disguise her age. She looked sixty at the first glance, and close acquaintanceship never proved her older.
Another and still more winning trait was one attaching to the corners of her mouth. Before she made a remark these often twitched gently: not backwards and forwards, the index of nervousness; not down upon the jaw, the sign of determination; but palpably upwards, in precisely the curve adopted to represent mirth in the broad caricatures of schoolboys. Only this element in her face was expressive of anything within the woman, but it was unmistakable. It expressed humour subjective as well as objective—which could survey the peculiarities of self in as whimsical a light as those of other people.
This is not all of Mrs. Swancourt. She had held out to Elfride hands whose fingers were literally stiff with rings, signis auroque rigentes, like Helen’s robe. These rows of rings were not worn in vanity apparently. They were mostly antique and dull, though a few were the reverse.
Right Hand
1st. Plainly set oval onyx, representing a devil’s head. 2nd. Green jasper intaglio, with red veins. 3rd. Entirely gold, bearing figure of a hideous griffin. 4th. A sea-green monster diamond, with small diamonds round it. 5th. Antique cornelian intaglio of dancing figure of a satyr. 6th. An angular band chased with dragons’ heads. 7th. A facetted carbuncle accompanied by ten little twinkling emeralds; etc. etc.
Left Hand
1st. A reddish-yellow toadstone. 2nd. A heavy ring enamelled in colours, and bearing a jacinth. 3rd. An amethystine sapphire. 4th. A polished ruby, surrounded by diamonds. 5th. The engraved ring of an abbess.
