“Hate you, my darling?”
“Because I am disobedient. Oh, papa, I cannot help it. He should not have come. He should not have been let to come.” He had not a word to say to her. He could not as yet bring himself to tell her—that it should be as she desired. Much less could he now argue with her as to the impossibility of such a marriage as he had done on former occasions when the matter had been discussed. He could only press his arm tightly round her waist, and be silent. “It cannot be altered now, papa. Look at me. Tell me that you love me.”
“Have you doubted my love?”
“No, papa—but I would do anything to make you happy; anything that I could do. Papa, you do not want me to marry Lord Popplecourt?”
“I would not have you marry any man without loving him.”
“I never can love anybody else. That is what I wanted you to know, papa.”
To this he made no reply, nor was there anything else said upon the subject before the carriage drove up to the railway station. “Do not get out, dear,” he said, seeing that her eyes had been filled with tears. “It is not worth while. God bless you, my child! You will be up in London I hope in a fortnight, and we must try to make the house a little less dull for you.”
And so he had encountered the third attack.
Lady Mary, as she was driven home, recovered her spirits wonderfully. Not a word had fallen from her father which she could use hereafter as a refuge from her embarrassments. He had made her no promise. He had assented to nothing. But there had been something in his manner, in his gait, in his eye, in the pressure of his arm, which made her feel that her troubles would soon be at an end.
“I do love you so much,” she said to Mrs. Finn late on that afternoon.
“I am glad of that, dear.”
“I shall always love you—because you have been on my side all through.”
“No, Mary;—that is not so.”
“I know it is so. Of course you have to be wise because you are older. And papa would not have you here with me if you were not wise. But I know you are on my side—and papa knows it too. And someone else shall know it some day.”
LXVII
“He Is Such a Beast”
Lord Silverbridge remained hunting in the Brake country till a few days before the meeting of Parliament, and had he been left to himself he would have had another week in the country and might probably have overstayed the opening day; but he had not been left to himself. In the last week in January an important despatch reached his hands, from no less important a person than Sir Timothy Beeswax, suggesting to him that he should undertake the duty of seconding the address in the House of Commons. When the proposition first reached him it made his hair stand on end. He had never yet risen to his feet in the House. He had spoken at those election meetings in Cornwall, and had found it easy enough. After the first or second time he had thought it good fun. But he knew that standing up in the House of Commons would be different from that. Then there would be the dress! “I should so hate to fig myself out and look like a guy,” he said to Tregear, to whom of course he confided the offer that was made to him. Tregear was very anxious that he should accept it. “A man should never refuse anything of that kind which comes in his way,” Tregear said.
“It is only because I am the governor’s son,” Silverbridge pleaded.
“Partly so perhaps. But if it be altogether so, what of that? Take the goods the gods provide you. Of course all these things which our ambition covets are easier to Duke’s sons than to others. But not on that account should a Duke’s son refuse them. A man when he sees a rung vacant on the ladder should always put his feet there.”
“I’ll tell you what,” said Silverbridge. “If I thought this was all fair sailing I’d do it. I should feel certain that I should come a cropper, but still I’d try it. As you say, a fellow should try. But it’s all meant as a blow at the governor. Old Beeswax thinks that if he can get me up to swear that he and his crew are real first-chop hands, that will hit the governor hard. It’s as much as saying to the governor—‘This chap belongs to me, not to you.’ That’s a thing I won’t go in for.” Then Tregear counselled him to write to his father for advice, and at the same time to ask Sir Timothy to allow him a day or two for consideration. This counsel he took. His letter reached his father two days before he left Matching. In answer to it there came first a telegram begging Silverbridge to be in London on the Monday, and then a letter, in which the Duke expressed himself as being anxious to see his son before giving a final answer to the question. Thus it was that Silverbridge had been taken away from his hunting.
Isabel Boncassen, however, was now in
