Eve’s eyes were bright enough now, but she was more silent than she had been at their tea-drinking, and she was evidently out of spirits.
“I’m afraid you didn’t enjoy the skating this afternoon.”
“Not much. The mornings are pleasanter. We came too late.”
“Shall you come tomorrow morning?”
“Yes; I have promised my young sisters to bring them for a long morning. They won’t let me off.”
“Do they skate?”
“Hetty skates. The little one only slides. She is a most determined slider.”
“Does Colonel Marchant never come with you?”
“Never. He does not care about walking with girls.”
“Perhaps it is presumptuous in a bachelor to speculate on domestic feelings, but I think if I were a widower with five nice daughters my chief delight would be in going about with them.”
“If you look round among your friends I fancy you will find that kind of father the exception rather than the rule,” Eve answered, with a touch of bitterness.
They walked on in silence for a little while after this, she looking straight before her into the cool grey evening, he stealing an occasional glance at her profile.
How pretty she was! The pearly complexion was so delicate, and yet so fresh and glowing in its youthful health. Hygeia herself might have had just such a complexion. The features, too, so neatly cut, the nose as clear in its chiselling as if it were pure Grecian, but with just that little tilt at the tip which gave piquancy to the face. The mouth was more thoughtful than he cared to see the lips of girlhood, for those pensive lines suggested domestic anxieties; but when she smiled or laughed the thoughtfulness vanished, lost in a radiant gaiety that shone like sunlight over all her countenance. He could not doubt that a happy disposition, a power of rising superior to small sordid cares, was a leading characteristic of her nature.
She had natural cheerfulness, the richest dowry a wife can bring to husband and home. Presently, as he swung his stick against the light tracery of hawthorn and blackberry, a happy thought occurred to him. His sister had pledged herself to be kind to these motherless girls. Her kindness could not begin too soon.
“You are to bring your sisters to the ice tomorrow morning, Miss Marchant,” he said presently. “What do you call morning?”
“I hope we shall be there before eleven. The mornings are so lovely in this frosty weather.”
“The mornings are delicious. Come as early as you possibly can. After two hours’ skating you will be tolerably tired, I should think—though you walk with the air of a person who does not know what it is to be tired—so you must all come to lunch with my sister.”
“You are very kind,” said Eve, blushing, and suddenly radiant with her happiest smile, “but we could not think of such a thing.”
“I understand. You would not come at my invitation. You think I have no rights in the case. Yet it would be hard if a brother couldn’t ask his friends to his sister’s house.”
“Friends, perhaps, yes; but we are mere acquaintance.”
“Please don’t say anything so unkind. I felt that we were friends from the first, you and your sisters and I, from the hour we found you on the top of the hill, when I mistook you for fairies. However, all the exigencies of the situation shall be complied with. My sister shall write to you this evening.”
“Pray, pray don’t suggest such a thing,” entreated Eve, very much in earnest. “Lady Hartley will think us vulgar, pushing girls.”
“Lady Hartley will think nothing of the kind. She was saying, only a few hours ago, that she would like to see more of you all. You must all come, remember—all five. The Champernownes leave by an early train tomorrow morning,” he added cheerfully; “there will be plenty of room for you.”
“Are the Miss Champernownes going away?”
“Yes, they go on to a much smarter house, where baccarat is played of an evening, instead of our modest billiards and whist. My brother-in-law is a very sober personage. He is not in the movement. It is my private opinion that those three handsome young ladies have been unspeakably bored at Redwold Towers.”
“I am very glad they are going,” answered Eve, frankly. “We don’t know them, so their going or coming ought not to make any difference to us. But there is something oppressive about them. They are so handsome, they dress so well, and they seem so thoroughly pleased with themselves.”
“Yes, there’s where the offence comes in. Isn’t it odd that from the moment a man or woman lets other people see that he or she is thoroughly delighted with his or her individuality, talents, beauty, or worldly position, everybody else begins to detest that person? A Shakespeare or a Scott must go through life with a seeming unconsciousness of his own powers, if he would have his fellow-men love him.”
“I think both Shakespeare and Scott contrived to do so, and that is one of the reasons why all the world worships them,” said Eve, and on this slight ground they founded a long conversation upon their favourite books and authors. He did not find her “cultured.” Of the learning which pervades modern drawing-rooms—the learning of the Fortnightly, and the Contemporary, the Nineteenth Century and Macmillan—he found her sorely deficient. She had read no new books, she knew nothing of recent theories in art, science, or religion. She knew her Shakespeare and Scott, her Dickens, Thackeray, and Bulwer-Lytton, and had read the poets whom everybody reads. She had never heard of Marlow, and Beaumont and Fletcher were to her only names. She revelled in fiction, the old, familiar fiction of the great masters; but history was a blank. She had not read Froude; she had never heard of Green, Gardiner, Freeman, or Maine.
“You will
