For the brief little weeks of the season flitted quickly away, and the date fixed for their departure drew near rapidly. By this time Millefleurs had got to be exceedingly intimate with the family. He went and came almost as he pleased, sometimes offering himself, sometimes coming in to luncheon without that ceremony—always with something to do for them, or something to say to them, which linked one day to another. This was much, but it was not all that was wanted. Rintoul, looking on with eyes enlightened by that knowledge he had acquired of what “the fellows would say,” did not feel half satisfied. He was the anxious member of the party. Even Lord Lindores, whose friends at the clubs discussed such matters less perhaps than the young men, and whose interests were more political, was not so alive to all the risks and all the changes of opinion as was Rintoul. He was nervous above measure about this business of Edith’s. He even took his mother to task about it during the last week of their stay in town. “Isn’t that fellow coming to the point?” he said.
“What fellow, and what point?” said Lady Lindores. It must be acknowledged that if ever a young man anxious for the true interests of his family was tried by the ignorance and stupidity—not to say callousness—of his relations, Rintoul was that man.
“Look here, mother,” he said, exasperated; “just think for a moment what people will say, and ask yourself how you will like it. They will say Millefleurs has been amusing himself all this time, and never meant anything. I make no doubt that they say it already. He has been amusing himself—exposing her to all sorts of remarks; and then the end will come, and he will leave her planté là.”
“Rintoul,” said his mother, reddening with anger, “this one idea of yours makes you absurd. Who is it that has it in his power to leave Edith planté là? To think that I should be forced to use such words! If you mean to make me uncomfortable about that boy—”
“He is no more a boy than I am, mother. I warned you of that. He knows very well what he is about. He has had the pleasure of your society, and he has enjoyed it all and amused himself very much. But he doesn’t mean to commit himself. Do you think I don’t know what people say? I don’t mean that it is Edith’s fault, or even your fault, mother; only, some women know how to manage. It is a thing that never could happen with some people. You will see, unless you exert yourself, that the last day will come, and you will be just where you were. I don’t know whether staying a week or two longer would do any good,” he added, ruefully. “If there is the chance that it might bring him to the point, there is also the chance that people would divine your motive, and say that was why you were staying on. Don’t you think you could put a little steam on, when the result is so important, and bring him to the point?”
“Steam on! Do you mean to insult me, Rintoul?” his mother cried.
But this was too much for the young man, who felt himself to be the only one of the family to whom the true position of affairs was apparent. “If you cannot understand me, mother, I can’t say anything more,” he said, feeling as if he could almost have cried over her callousness. Why was it that nobody but he would see how serious the situation was?
All this time, however, while Millefleurs was frequenting the house almost daily, Lady Lindores’s perception had been partly confused by the effort it cost her to avoid being drawn into what she felt must be an unnecessary confidential disclosure to Beaufort of the history of the family since they last met. Beaufort did not insist upon accompanying his charge—for such, more or less, Millefleurs was, his family being too much alarmed lest he should disappear again, to leave him without this species of surveillance, which the good-natured young fellow allowed to be perfectly natural, and neither resisted nor resented; but he came sometimes, and he never relinquished his appeal to Lady Lindores. He was not posing in any attitude of a heartbroken lover. Even to her he expressed no despair. He took his life gravely, but not without cheerfulness, and had, she felt almost with a little pique, got over it, and been able to put Carry out of his life. But he wanted to know: that seemed all that was left of the old romance. He wanted to be told how it had happened—how his love had been lost to him. It did not seem to be resentment or indignation that moved him, but a serious kind of interest. And strangely enough, it seemed to Lady Lindores that he did not want to avoid her, or keep out of hearing of the name of the girl who had forsaken him. He seemed to like herself, Carry’s mother, as well as ever, and to regard Edith with the same elder-brotherly air which had pleased her so much in the old days. Between the inquiring countenance which seemed without ceasing to ask an explanation from her, and the prattle of Millefleurs, which ran on in a pleasant stream, and to which it seemed so ridiculous to attach any serious meaning, Lady Lindores was kept in a perplexity and harassment of mind which took away altogether her pleasure in society at the end of their stay in London. After her impatient rejection of Rintoul’s counsels, she began to consider them, as was natural; and much as all the particulars
