The Ladies Lindores

so long oblivious of the passage of time. This brought a smile upon Lord Lindores’s face. It dried his wife’s eyes, and made her cease praying. Was it possible? Could Edith, after all, have yielded to the seductions of the dukedom? Her mother felt herself struck to the heart by the thought, as if an arrow had gone into her. Was not she pleased? It would delight her husband, it would secure family peace, it would give Edith such a position, such prospects, as far exceeded the utmost hopes that could have been formed for her. Somehow, however, the first sensation of which Lady Lindores was conscious was a humiliation deep and bitter. Edith too! she said to herself, with a quivering smile upon her lips, a sense of heartsickness and downfall within her. She had wished it surely⁠—she had felt that to see her child a duchess would be a fine thing, a thing worth making a certain sacrifice for; and Millefleurs had nothing in him to make a woman fear for her daughter’s happiness. But women, everybody knows, are inaccessible to reason. It is to be doubted whether Lady Lindores had ever in her life received a blow more keen than when she made up her mind that Edith was going to do the right thing, the prudent wise thing, which would secure family peace to her mother, and the most dazzling future to herself.

When a still longer interval had elapsed, and no one came to tell her of the great decision, which evidently must have been made, Lady Lindores thought it best to go back to the drawing-room, in which she had left Edith and her lover. To think that Edith should have found the love-talk of Millefleurs so delightful after all, as to have forgotten how time passed, and everything but him and his conversation, made her mother smile once more, but not very happily. When she entered the drawing-room she saw the pair at the other end of it, by the fire, seated close together, he bending forward talking eagerly, she leaning towards him, her face full of smiles and interest. They did not draw back, or change their position, as lovers do, till Lady Lindores, much marvelling, came close up to them, when Millefleurs, still talking, jumped up to find a chair for her. “And that was the last time we met,” Millefleurs was saying, too much absorbed in his narrative to give it up. “An idea of duty like that, don’t you know, leaves nothing to be said.”

Lady Lindores sat down, and Millefleurs stood in front of the two ladies, with his back to the fire, as Englishmen love to stand. There was a pause⁠—of extreme bewilderment on the part of the newcomer. Then Millefleurs said, in his round little mellifluous voice, folding his hands⁠—“I have been telling dear Edith of a very great crisis in my life. She understands me perfectly, dear Lady Lindores. I am very sorry to tell you that she will not marry me; but we are friends for life.”

XLI

Carry drove away from Lindores in the afternoon sunshine, leaning back in her corner languidly watching the slanting light upon the autumnal trees, and the haze in which the distance was hid, soft, blue, and ethereal, full of the poetry of nature. She had about her that soft languor and delicious sense of freedom from pain which makes convalescence so sweet. She felt as if she had got over a long and painful illness, and, much shattered and exhausted, was yet getting better, in a heavenly exemption from suffering, and perfect rest. This sense of recovery, indeed, is very different from the languor and exhaustion of sorrow; and yet without any intention of hers, it veiled with a sort of innocent hypocrisy those feelings which were not in consonance with her supposed desolation and the mourning of her widowhood. Her behaviour was exemplary, and her aspect all that it ought to be, everybody felt; and though the countryside was well aware that she had no great reason to be inconsolable, it yet admired and respected her for appearing to mourn. Her fragility, her paleness, her smile of gentle exhaustion and worn-out looks, did her unspeakable credit with all the good people about. They were aware that she had little enough to mourn for, but there are occasions on which nature demands hypocrisy. Any display of satisfaction at another’s death is abhorrent to mankind. Carry in her convalescence was no hypocrite, but she got the credit of it, and was all the better thought of. People were almost grateful to her for showing her husband this mark of respect. After all, it is hard, indeed, when a man goes out of this world without even the credit of a woman’s tears. But Carry had no sorrow in her heart as she drove away from the door of her former home. It had not been thought right that she should go in. A widow of not yet a fortnight’s standing may, indeed, drive out to get a little air, which is necessary for her health, but she cannot be supposed to be able to go into a house, even if it is her father’s. She was kissed tenderly and comforted, as they took leave of her. “My darling Carry, Edith and I will drive over to see you tomorrow; and then you have the children,” her mother said, herself half taken in by Carry’s patient smile, and more than half desirous of being taken in. “Oh yes, I have the children,” Carry said. But in her heart she acknowledged, as she drove away, that she did not even want the children. When one has suffered very much, the mere absence of pain becomes a delicious fact, a something actual, which breathes delight into the soul. Even when your back aches or your head aches habitually, to be free of that for half an hour is heaven;