Was it well, or wise, or safe that he, Eve Marchant’s promised husband, should be the guardian angel of this wild, impulsive peasant girl—a guardian angel under the borrowed name of Smith, liable at any hour to be confronted with people who knew his real name and surroundings? He considered his position very seriously during the drive to Bruton Street, and he resolved to do all in his power to narrow his relations with the Venetians, while fulfilling every promise and every obligation to the uttermost.
Colonel Marchant was at the family dinner in Charles Street. It had been agreed between Mrs. Vansittart and her son that he should be invited to this one gathering, so that he should not have any ground for considering himself left out in the cold, albeit his future son-in-law’s intention was to hold as little communion with him as possible. Eve’s neglected girlhood had not fostered filial affection. The parental name had been a name of fear in the Marchant household, and the sisters had been happiest when their father was amusing himself in London, careless of whether the angry baker had stopped the daily supply, or the long-suffering butcher had refused to deliver another joint. Such a man had but little claim upon a daughter’s love, and Eve had confessed to Vansittart that her father was not beloved by his children, and that it would not grieve her if in her future life she and that father met but rarely.
“You are going to be so generous to me,” she said, “that I shall be able to help my sisters—in ever so many ways—with their clothes, and with their housekeeping; for I can never spend a third part of the income you are settling upon me.”
“My frugal Eve! Why, there are women with half your charms who would not be able to dress themselves upon such a pittance.”
“I have no patience with such women. They should be condemned to three gowns a year of their own making, as my sisters and I have been ever since we were old enough to handle needles and scissors. I am horrified at the extravagance I have seen at the dressmaker’s—the reckless way some of your sister’s friends spend money.”
“And my sister herself, no doubt. She has a rich husband, and I dare say is one of the worst offenders in this line?”
“Not she! Lady Hartley dresses exquisitely, but she is not extravagant like the others. She is too generous to other people to be lavish upon herself. She is always thinking of doing a kindness to somebody.”
“Poor little Maud! I remember when she was in the schoolroom all her pocket-money used to be spent upon dolls for the hospital children. She used to come and beg of me when she was insolvent.”
Vansittart met Wilfred Sefton at an evening party within a few days of that rencontre at Chelsea; and at the same party Vansittart was disturbed by seeing Sefton and his mother in close confabulation in one of those remote and luxurious corners where people are not obliged to listen to the music that is being performed in the principal room.
He questioned his mother about Sefton at breakfast next morning. “You and he seemed uncommonly thick,” he said. “What were you talking about?”
“About you, and your approaching marriage.”
“I am sure you said nothing that was not kind, but I wish to Heaven you would not discuss my affairs with a stranger,” said Vansittart, with some warmth.
“Mr. Sefton is not a stranger. Your father and his father were very good friends. He is your sister’s most influential neighbour, and they are on the friendliest terms. Why should you call him a stranger?”
“Because I don’t like him, mother; and because I wish never to feel myself on any other footing with him.”
“And yet he likes you.”
“Does he? I am a very bad judge of humanity if my dislike of Sefton is not heartily reciprocated by Sefton’s dislike of me. And no doubt the more he dislikes me the more he will assure other people—my kindred especially—that he likes me. You are too straight yourself, mother, in every thought and purpose, to understand the Seftonian mind. It is the kind of intellect which always works crookedly. He admired Eve Marchant, allowed his admiration to be patent to everybody, and yet was not man enough to try to win her for his wife.”
“He had not your courage, Jack, in facing unpleasant surroundings and disagreeable antecedents.”
“He had not manhood enough to marry for love. That is what you mean, mother. He was quite willing to compromise an innocent and pure-minded girl, by attentions which he would not have dared to offer to a girl with a watchful father or mother.”
“My dear Jack, you exaggerate Mr. Sefton’s attentions. He assured me that his chief interest in Eve arose from his old companionship with her brother, with whom he was on very intimate terms until the unhappy young man turned out an irretrievable scamp.”
Vansittart winced at the phrase. It is not an agreeable thing for a man to be told that his future brother-in-law, the brother whom his future wife adores, is irretrievable.
“Mr. Sefton has taken a great deal of trouble to trace Harold Marchant’s career since he was last heard of,” continued Mrs. Vansittart, “and would hold out a friendly hand to him if there were anything to be done.”
“He has no need to hold out a friendly hand. If there is anything to be done for my brother-in-law I can do it.”
“How ready you are to take new burdens!”
“I think nothing a burden which comes to me with the woman I love.”
Mrs. Vansittart sighed, and was silent. The idea of these disreputable connections which her son was to take to himself in marrying Eve was full of pain for the wellborn matron, whose people on every side were of unblemished respectability. Never had
