“You will not accept their apology?” said the lawyer.
“Oh yes;—or rather, it is unnecessary. You may tell them that I have changed my mind, and that I will ask for no apology. As far as the paper is concerned, it will be better to let the thing die a natural death. I should never have troubled myself about the newspaper if the Bishop had not sent it to me. Indeed I had seen it before the Bishop sent it, and thought little or nothing of it. Animals will after their kind. The wasp stings, and the polecat stinks, and the lion tears its prey asunder. Such a paper as that of course follows its own bent. One would have thought that a bishop would have done the same.”
“I may tell them that the action is withdrawn.”
“Certainly; certainly. Tell them also that they will oblige me by putting in no apology. And as for your bill, I would prefer to pay it myself. I will exercise no anger against them. It is not they who in truth have injured me.” As he returned home he was not altogether happy, feeling that the Bishop would escape him; but he made his wife happy by telling her the decision to which he had come.
IV
“It Is Impossible”
The absence of Dr. and Mrs. Wortle was peculiarly unfortunate on that afternoon, as a visitor rode over from a distance to make a call—a visitor whom they both would have been very glad to welcome, but of whose coming Mrs. Wortle was not so delighted to hear when she was told by Mary that he had spent two or three hours at the Rectory. Mrs. Wortle began to think whether the visitor could have known of her intended absence and the Doctor’s. That Mary had not known that the visitor was coming she was quite certain. Indeed she did not really suspect the visitor, who was one too ingenuous in his nature to preconcert so subtle and so wicked a scheme. The visitor, of course, had been Lord Carstairs.
“Was he here long?” asked Mrs. Wortle anxiously.
“Two or three hours, mamma. He rode over from Buttercup where he is staying, for a cricket match, and of course I got him some lunch.”
“I should hope so,” said the Doctor. “But I didn’t think that Carstairs was so fond of the Momson lot as all that.”
Mrs. Wortle at once doubted the declared purpose of this visit to Buttercup. Buttercup was more than halfway between Carstairs and Bowick.
“And then we had a game of lawn-tennis. Talbot and Monk came through to make up sides.” So much Mary told at once, but she did not tell more till she was alone with her mother.
Young Carstairs had certainly not come over on the sly, as we may call it, but nevertheless there had been a project in his mind, and fortune had favoured him. He was now about nineteen, and had been treated for the last twelve months almost as though he had been a man. It had seemed to him that there was no possible reason why he should not fall in love as well as another. Nothing more sweet, nothing more lovely, nothing more lovable than Mary Wortle had he ever seen. He had almost made up his mind to speak on two or three occasions before he left Bowick; but either his courage or the occasion had failed him. Once, as he was walking home with her from church, he had said one word;—but it had amounted to nothing. She had escaped from him before she was bound to understand what he meant. He did not for a moment suppose that she had understood anything. He was only too much afraid that she regarded him as a mere boy. But when he had been away from Bowick two months he resolved that he would not be regarded as a mere boy any longer. Therefore he took an opportunity of going to Buttercup, which he certainly would not have done for the sake of the Momsons or for the sake of the cricket.
He ate his lunch before he said a word, and then, with but poor grace, submitted to the lawn-tennis with Talbot and Monk. Even to his youthful mind it seemed that Talbot and Monk were brought in on purpose. They were both of them boys he had liked, but he hated them now. However, he played his game, and when that was over, managed to get rid of them, sending them back through the gate to the school-ground.
“I think I must say goodbye now,” said Mary, “because there are ever so many things in the house which I have got to do.”
“I am going almost immediately,” said the young lord.
“Papa will be so sorry not to have seen you.” This had been said once or twice before.
“I came over,” he said, “on purpose to see you.”
They were now standing on the middle of the lawn, and Mary had assumed a look which intended to signify that she expected him to go. He knew the place well enough to get his own horse, or to order the groom to get it for him. But instead of that, he stood his ground, and now declared his purpose.
“To see me, Lord Carstairs!”
“Yes, Miss Wortle. And if the Doctor had been here, or your mother, I should have told them.”
“Have told them what?” she asked. She knew; she felt sure that she knew; and yet she could not refrain from the question.
“I have come here to ask if you can love me.”
It was a most decided way of declaring his purpose, and one which made Mary feel that a great difficulty was at once thrown upon her. She really did not know whether she could love him or not. Why shouldn’t she have been able to love him?
