The Ladies Lindores

Nellie. But by and by the smile began to be forced, and confusion to take the part of hilarity. It was Miss Sallie Field herself at last who took the bull by the horns, if that is not too profane a simile. She took the Duke apart one fine evening, when the whole party had strolled out upon the lawn after dinner⁠—“Your son,” she said, “is tormenting me to marry him,” and she fixed upon the Duke her intelligent eyes. His Grace was confounded, as may be supposed. He stood aghast at this middle-aged woman with her Transatlantic accent and air. He did not want to be uncivil. “You!” he said, in consternation, then blushed for his bad manners, and added, suavely, “I beg you a thousand pardons⁠—you mean⁠—your niece.” That of itself would be bad enough. “No,” said Miss Sallie, with an air of regret, “it does not concern Nellie. I have told him that would be more reasonable. Nellie is very pretty, and has a quantity of money; but he doesn’t seem to see it. Perhaps you don’t know that this was what he wanted when I sent him home to his mother? I thought he would have got over it when he came home. I consider him quite unsuitable for me, but I am a little uneasy about the moral consequences. I am thirty-eight, and I have a moderate competency, not a fortune, like Nellie. I thought it better to talk it over with you before it went any further,” Miss Sallie said.

And when he took this middle-aged and plainspoken bride to Dalrulzian to visit the young people there, Millefleurs did not attempt to conceal his consciousness of the objections which his friends would no doubt make. “I told you it was quite unsuitable,” he said, turning up his little eyes and clasping his plump hands. “We were both perfectly aware of that; but it is chic, don’t you know, if you will allow me to use a vulgar word.” Edith clasped the arm of John when the Marquis and Marchioness of Millefleurs had retired, and these two young people indulged in subdued bursts of laughter. They stepped out upon the terrace walk to laugh, that they might not be heard, feeling the delightful contrast of their own well-assorted youth and illimitable happiness. The most delightful vanity mingled with their mirth⁠—that vanity in each other which feels like a virtue. It was summer, and the air was soft, the moon shining full over the far sweep of the undulating country, blending with a silvery remnant of daylight which lingered far into the night. The hills in the far distance shone against the lightness of the horizon, and the crest of fir-trees on Dalrulzian hill stood out against the sky, every twig distinct. It was such a night as the lovers babbled of on that bank on which the moonbeams lay at Belmont, but more spiritual than any Italian night because of that soft heavenly lingering of the day which belongs to the north. This young pair had not been married very long, and had not ceased to think their happiness the chief and most reasonable subject of interest to all around them. They were still comparing themselves with everything in earth, and almost in heaven, to the advantage of their own blessedness. They were amused beyond description by the noble couple who had come to visit them. “Confess, now, that you feel a pang of regret,” John said⁠—and they stood closer and closer together, and laughed under their breath as at the most delightful joke in the world. Upstairs the Marchioness shut the window, remarking that the air was very cold. “What a fool that little thing was not to have you,” she said; “you would have done very well together.” “Dear Edith!” said Millefleurs, folding his hands, “it is very pretty, don’t you know, to see her so happy.”

The observations made downstairs, upon the actors in this little drama, were very free, as was natural. Rolls himself, who had held a more important role than anyone knew, was perhaps apt to exaggerate the greatness of his own part, but with an amiable and benevolent effect. His master, indeed, he looked upon with benevolent indulgence, as knowing no more than a child of the chief incident. If Rolls had not been already bound to the house of Dalrulzian by lifelong fidelity and by that identification of himself and all his interests, his pride and self-regard, with his “family,” which is something even more tenacious and real than faithfulness, he would have been made so by the fact that John, without in the slightest degree realising that Rolls was suffering for him, had given orders to Mr. Monypenny to secure the most expensive assistance for his trial. The pride, contempt, satire, and keen suppressed emotion with which this act filled the old servant’s bosom, were beyond description. “It was just downright extravagance,” he said to Bauby; “they’re a’ fuils, thae Erskines, frae father to son. Laying out all that siller upon me; and no’ a glimmer o’ insight a’ the time. An’ he had had the sense to see, it would have been natural; but how could he divine my meaning when there was no conscience in himsel’? and giving out his money all the same as if notes were things ye could gather on the roadside?” “He mightna understand ye, Tammas, but he ken’t your meaning was good,” said Bauby. Their position was changed by all the changes that had happened, to the increase of their grandeur if not of their happiness. Rolls had now a tall and respectful youth under his orders, and Bauby was relieved, in so far as she would allow herself to be relieved, of the duties of the kitchen. It was gratifying to their pride, but there is little doubt that they sighed occasionally for the freedom of the time when Rolls was alone in his glory, dictator of the feminine household,