“Edith!” Carry repeated after her. And then her voice rose almost to a shriek—“Edith! You cannot mean that?”
“But I do mean it. Oh, I know there will be a thousand difficulties. Lord Lindores will never consent: that is why they go and do it, I suppose. Because she was the last person he ought to have fallen in love with, as they say in the Critic—”
“Edith!” repeated Carry again. Nora was half satisfied, half disappointed, to find that her own part of the story faded altogether from her friend’s mind when this astonishing peace of intelligence came in. Then she whispered in an awestricken voice, “Does my mother know?”
“Nobody knows—not even Edith herself. I saw it because, you know—And of course,” cried Nora, in delightful self-contradiction, “it does not matter at all when I meet him now; for he is not thinking of me any longer, but of her. Oh, he never did think of me, except to say to himself, ‘There is that horrid girl again!’ ”
This time Nora’s laugh passed without any notice from Carry, whose thoughts were absorbed in her sister’s concerns. “Was not I right,” she said, clasping her hands, “when I said I was frightened for John Erskine? I said so to my mother today. What I was thinking of was very different: that he might quarrel with Mr. Torrance—that harm might come in that way. But oh, this is worse, far worse! Edith! I thought she at least would be safe. How shortsighted we are even in our instincts! Oh, my little sister! What can I do, Nora, what can I do to save her?”
Nora received this appeal with a countenance trembling between mirth and vexation. She did not think Edith at all to be pitied. If there was any victim—and the whole matter was so absurd that she felt it ought not to be looked at in so serious a light—but if there was a victim, it was not Edith, but herself. She could only reply to Carry’s anxiety with a renewed outbreak of not very comfortable laughter. “Save her! You forget,” she said, with sudden gravity, “that Edith is not one to be saved unless she pleases. And if she should like Mr. Erskine—”
“My father will kill her!” Lady Caroline cried.
XIII
Lord Rintoul made his appearance in the house which his parents had hired in Eaton Place on the day before their arrival, with a mixture of satisfaction and anxiety. He was pleased, for he was a good young fellow on the whole, and fond of his mother and sister; but he was anxious, for he was a Guardsman—a young man about town, “up,” as he modestly hoped, to most things—and they were people from the country, who in all probability were not quite dressed as they ought to be, or prepared for the duties of their position. These mingled sentiments were apparent in the young man’s face as he walked into the room in which Lady Lindores and Edith were sitting together, working out on their side a programme of the things they were going to do. Notwithstanding Carry, they were both tolerably cheerful, looking forward to the excitement of this unaccustomed life with a little stir of anticipation; for neither mother nor daughter was blasée, and the thrill of quickened existence, in a place where human pulses beat more rapidly and the tide runs fuller than elsewhere, moved them in spite of themselves. Lady Lindores would have said, and did say, that her heart was not in it—and this in perfect good faith; yet when she was actually in London, though her daughter’s pale face and lonely life were often present with her, the impression was less strong than when that white face, as poor Carry said, was constantly before her eyes. She was a handsome woman of forty-five, with a liking for all that was beautiful, a love of conversation and movement, much repressed by the circumstances of her life, but always existing; and when thus free for a moment from habitual cares, her heart rose almost in spite of herself, and she was able to believe that things would set themselves right somehow, even though she did not see from whence the alleviation was to come. She was discussing with Edith many things that they had planned and thought of, when Rintoul arrived. Their plans embraced various matters which were not within the range of that golden youth’s ideas. When they had been in London before, they had vexed his soul by the list of things they had wanted to see. The sights of London! such as country people of the lower orders went staring about: Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, even St. Paul’s and the Tower!—things which he had never seen nor thought of seeing himself, though he often passed the former, not taking any notice, thinking it was “bad form” to show any rustic curiosity. His mother and the girls had scoffed at all he said about “bad form”; but now they were accustomed to their change of circumstances, and everything was different. Would they be reasonable, and acknowledge that there were certain matters in which he was an authority now?
Rintoul himself had made, he was conscious, immense progress since he first stepped upon that platform of rank to which he was now accustomed. At first the elevation had made him a little giddy. Young Robin Lindores, of the 120th, had been on the whole a very simple young fellow, pleased to feel that he had the benefit of “good connections,” and an uncle who was an Earl, though they had never been of any use to him. Even in that innocent stage he was, as is natural to a young man, vaguely critical of the proceedings of his “people.” He thought it was a pity they should
