Still Lady Lindores did not make any reply.
“I wonder at you, mother,” he cried, exasperated. “I should have thought it would be your first object to see Edith happily settled. And when you think how difficult it is—how many there are always ready, waiting to snap up any fellow with money! I believe,” he said, with a sort of prophetic wrath, a visionary anger at what might have been—“I believe if my father had not interfered, Carry was as likely as not to have married that Professor fellow. By the way, isn’t Erskine at Dalrulzian? and I daresay you have had him up at Lindores?”
“Certainly, we have had him up at Lindores. What is your objection to that?” said Lady Lindores, quietly.
And now it was Rintoul’s turn to sigh and shake his head with hopeless impatience. Was it impossible to get her to understand? “I don’t know what you people are thinking of,” he said, with a kind of quiet despair. “Though you know what mischief happened before, you will have that fellow to the house, you will let him be with Edith as much as he pleases.”
“Edith!” cried Lady Lindores: and then she stopped short, and added with a laugh, “I assure you, Robin, there’s no danger in that quarter. The entire county has made up its mind that John Erskine is to marry Nora Barrington, and nobody else, whatever other people may say.”
Now it was Rintoul’s turn to be red and indignant. He was so much startled, that he sprang to his feet with an excitement altogether without justification. “Nora Barrington!” he cried; “I would like to know what right anyone has to mix up the name of an innocent girl—who never, I am certain, had either part or lot in such wretched schemings—”
“The same kind of schemings—but far more innocent—as those you would involve your sister in,” cried Lady Lindores, rising too, with a deep flush upon her face.
“Nothing of the kind, mother—besides, the circumstances are entirely different,” he cried, hotly. “Edith must marry well. She must marry to advantage, for the sake of the family. But Nora—a girl that would never lead herself to—to—that never had a thought of interest in her head—that doesn’t know what money means—”
“I am glad there is somebody you believe in, Robin,” his mother said.
The young man saw his inconsistency, but that mattered little. It is only in other people that we find consistency to be necessary. The consciousness made him hotter and less coherent perhaps, but no more. “The cases are entirely different. I see no resemblance between them,” he said, with resentment and indignation in every tone. Lady Lindores would have been more than human if she had not followed up her advantage.
“Yes,” she said, “in Nora’s case even I myself, though I am no matchmaker, feel disposed to aid in the scheme. For nothing could be more entirely suitable. The same position, the same class, the same tastes; and the Barringtons are poor, so that it would be a great comfort to them to see their girl in a nice house of her own; and she is very fond of Dalrulzian, and much liked in the neighbourhood. I can see everything in favour of the plan—nothing against it.”
“Except that it will never come to anything,” cried young Rintoul. “Good heavens! Nora—a girl that one never could think of in any such way—that never in her life—I’ll answer for it—made any plans about whom she was to marry. Mother, I think you might have so much respect for one of your own sex as to acknowledge that.”
“It is time to appeal to my respect for my own sex,” cried Lady Lindores, with an angry laugh. If this was how the tables were to be turned upon her! When she left the room, angry, yet indignantly amused at the same time, Rintoul reflected with hot indignation upon the want of sympathy and fellow-feeling among women. “When they do see a girl that’s above all that sort of thing, that it’s desecration to think of in that way, they either don’t understand her, or they’re jealous of her,” he said to himself, with profound conviction. “Women don’t know what justice means.”
XIV
The present writer has already confessed to a certain disinclination to venture upon any exposition of the manners and customs of the great; and should an attempt be made to thread the mazes of the season, and to represent in sober black and white the brilliant assemblies, the crowded receptions, the drawing-rooms and ballrooms and banqueting-rooms, all full of that sheen of satin and shimmer of pearls which only the most delicate manipulation, the lightest exquisite touch, can secure? Could the writer’s pen be dipped in tints as ethereal as those which fill the brush (if that is not too crude a word) of the accomplished President, then perhaps the task might be attempted; but common ink is not equal to it. Though Lady Lindores was negligent of her duties, and did not give herself up as she ought to have done to the task of getting invitations and doing her daughter justice, yet her shortcomings were made up by the superior energy and knowledge of her husband
