“It is not that, it is not that,” Carry protested among her tears.
But her mother would hear of nothing more alarming. “It is a wrong to your father to think he would take up the cause of such a man,” she said, indignantly; “and I should have been horribly disappointed in you, Carry, if you had thought of him for a moment.” Carry was so soothed, so comforted, so almost happy in her trouble, that the inmost doors of her heart opened to her mother. “Whatever he had been, oh, mother, do you think I could forget Edward?” she said. His name had not been mentioned between them for months before.
“Edward,” said Lady Lindores, shaking her head; and then she kissed the pleading expectant face, which she could only feel, not see. “He should have showed more energy, Carry. Had he been worthy of you, he would not have left this question unsettled till now.”
“What could he do?” cried Carry, roused out of her prostration; “he could not invent business for himself.” Again Lady Lindores shook her head; but by this time they had reached their own door, and in the fervour of her defence and championship of her lover, Carry got out of the carriage a very different creature from the prostrate and fainting girl who had been put into it at Tinto. She went with her mother to her room, feverish and anxious to plead the cause of Edward. Lady Lindores was a romantic woman, who believed in love, and had taught her children to do the same. But she was disappointed that her daughter’s lover had not been inspired by his love; that he had not found success, and secured his own cause beyond the power of evil fortune. Arguing against this adverse opinion, and defending Edward on every question, Carry recovered her courage and her composure. She felt able to fight for him to her last gasp when she left her mother, shaking her head still, but always well disposed to every generous plea; for the moment she had forgotten all the nearer dangers which had seemed so terrible to her an hour before.
Lady Lindores sat up in her dressing-gown till her husband and Edith came back. He was very gloomy, she excited and breathless, with a feverish sparkle in her eyes, which her mother noticed for the first time. She wondered if little Edith was in the secret too—that secret which she had herself scarcely thought of till tonight; and her husband’s aspect filled her with strange anxieties. Was it possible that she, who had known them so long, her husband for all the most important time of his life, her child since her first breath, should have discoveries to make in them now? The thought was painful to her, and she tried to dismiss it from her mind. “Carry is better,” she said, with an attempt to treat the subject lightly. “It was the glare of these rooms, I suppose. They are very handsome, but there was too much heat and too much light.”
“I hope it is the last time we shall have any such scenes from Carry,” said the Earl. “You ought to speak to her very seriously. She has been behaving like a fool.”
“Dear Robert,” said Lady Lindores, “it is trying to a girl of any feeling to have a proposal made to her in a ballroom, and I daresay Mr. Torrance was rude and pressing. It is exactly what I should have expected of him.”
“Since when,” said the Earl, sternly, “have you studied Mr. Torrance so closely as to divine what may be expected of him?”
“Robert! I have not studied him at all, nor do I attempt to divine. Carry’s agitation, her fright, her panic, if I may call it so—”
“Were simply ridiculous, ridiculous!” cried Lord Lindores. “I always thought her sentimental, but I never suspected her to be a fool.”
“Carry is no fool,” cried her mother, indignantly; “you know very well she has both spirit and sense, and more than sense. She is not a common girl. She ought not to be treated as one. And this man, this foxhunter, this vulgar laird—”
“As he will probably be your son-in-law, you will do well to avoid epithets,” Lord Lindores said.
“My son-in-law!” said his wife, in a suppressed shriek. “But Carry has refused him,” she added, with relief.
“Tonight—being flurried, and not knowing her own mind; but she will know better tomorrow.”
“Robert! for heaven’s sake, when she has been so distressed by this most hateful proposal, you surely will not suffer it to be repeated!”
“Why should it be a hateful proposal?” he said.
“Why?” Lady Lindores did not know how to answer; if he did not see it, if it did not jump at his eyes, as she said to herself, what explanation would make it clearer? She tried to smile and approach him on another side. “Dear Robert,” she said, tremulously—“to think of you taking the part of such a man! He must have some fine qualities, I am sure, or you never could have endured the outside of him, or his manners, or his talk. He is so unlike you, so unlike anything the girls have ever been taught to care for.” If this was flattery, surely it may be forgiven to the anxious mother. She was anxious too, as a wife, that her husband should not come down from the pedestal on which it had been her pride to keep him for so many years.
“That is all very well,” he said, impatiently; “but I never set myself up as a model of what my children were to like. Yes; he has fine
