On various occasions the countess showed some little curiosity about the lover; and at last, after about ten days, when she found herself beginning to be intimate with her new companion, she put the question point-blank. “I hate mysteries,” she said. “Who is the young man you are to marry?”
“He is a gentleman I’ve known a long time.”
“That’s no answer.”
“I don’t want to tell his name quite yet, Lady Linlithgow.”
“Why shouldn’t you tell his name, unless it’s something improper? Is he a gentleman?”
“Yes;—he is a gentleman.”
“And how old?”
“Oh, I don’t know;—perhaps thirty-two.”
“And has he any money?”
“He has his profession.”
“I don’t like these kind of secrets, Miss Morris. If you won’t say who he is, what was the good of telling me that you were engaged at all? How is a person to believe it?”
“I don’t want you to believe it.”
“Highty, tighty!”
“I told you my own part of the affair, because I thought you ought to know it as I was coming into your house. But I don’t see that you ought to know his part of it. As for not believing, I suppose you believed Lady Fawn?”
“Not a bit better than I believe you. People don’t always tell truth because they have titles, nor yet because they’ve grown old. He don’t live in London;—does he?”
“He generally lives in London. He is a barrister.”
“Oh—oh; a barrister is he. They’re always making a heap of money, or else none at all. Which is it with him?”
“He makes something.”
“As much as you could put in your eye and see none the worse.” To see the old lady, as she made this suggestion, turn sharp round upon Lucy, was as good as a play. “My sister’s nephew, the dean’s son, is one of the best of the rising ones, I’m told.” Lucy blushed up to her hair, but the dowager’s back was turned, and she did not see the blushes. “But he’s in Parliament, and they tell me he spends his money faster than he makes it. I suppose you know him?”
“Yes;—I knew him at Bobsborough.”
“It’s my belief that after all this fuss about Lord Fawn, he’ll marry his cousin, Lizzie Eustace. If he’s a lawyer, and as sharp as they say, I suppose he could manage her. I wish he would.”
“And she so bad as you say she is!”
“She’ll be sure to get somebody, and why shouldn’t he have her money as well as another? There never was a Greystock who didn’t want money. That’s what it will come to;—you’ll see.”
“Never,” said Lucy decidedly.
“And why not?”
“What I mean is that Mr. Greystock is—at least, I should think so from what I hear—the very last man in the world to marry for money.”
“What do you know of what a man would do?”
“It would be a very mean thing;—particularly if he does not love her.”
“Bother!” said the countess. “They were very near it in town last year before Lord Fawn came up at all. I knew as much as that. And it’s what they’ll come to before they’ve done.”
“They’ll never come to it,” said Lucy.
Then a sudden light flashed across the astute mind of the countess. She turned round in her chair, and sat for awhile silent, looking at Lucy. Then she slowly asked another question. “He isn’t your young man;—is he?” To this Lucy made no reply. “So that’s it, is it?” said the dowager. “You’ve done me the honour of making my house your home till my own sister’s nephew shall be ready to marry you?”
“And why not?” said Lucy, rather roughly.
“And dame Greystock, from Bobsborough, has sent you here to keep you out of her son’s way. I see it all. And that old frump at Richmond has passed you over to me because she did not choose to have such goings on under her own eye.”
“There have been no goings on,” said Lucy.
“And he’s to come here, I suppose, when my back’s turned?”
“He is not thinking of coming here. I don’t know what you mean. Nobody has done anything wrong to you. I don’t know why you say such cruel things.”
“He can’t afford to marry you, you know.”
“I don’t know anything about it. Perhaps we must wait ever so long;—five years. That’s nobody’s business but my own.”
“I found it all out;—didn’t I?”
“Yes;—you found it out.”
“I’m thinking of that sly old dame Greystock at Bobsborough—sending you here!” Neither on that nor on the two following days did Lady Linlithgow say a word further to Lucy about her engagement.
XXXV
Too Bad for Sympathy
When Frank Greystock left Bobsborough to go to Scotland, he had not said that he would return, nor had he at that time made up his mind whether he would do so or no. He had promised to go and shoot in Norfolk, and had half undertaken to be up in London with Herriot, working. Though it was holiday-time, still there was plenty of work for him to do—various heavy cases to get up, and papers to be read, if only he could settle himself down to the doing of it. But the scenes down in Scotland had been of a nature to make him unfit for steady labour. How was he to sail his bark through the rocks by which his present voyage was rendered so dangerous? Of course, to the reader, the way to do so seems to be clear enough. To work hard at his profession; to explain to his cousin that she had altogether mistaken his feelings; and to be true to Lucy Morris was so manifestly his duty, that to no reader will it appear possible that to any gentleman there could be a doubt. Instead of the existence of a difficulty, there was a flood of light upon his path—so the reader will think;—a flood so clear that not to see his way
