“Yes, Dr. Wortle—here I am.”
“We hardly expected to see you, my boy.”
“No—I suppose not. But when I heard that Mr. Peacocke had come back, and all about his marriage, you know, I could not but come over to see him. He and I have always been such great friends.”
“Oh—to see Mr. Peacocke?”
“I thought he’d think it unkind if I didn’t look him up. He has made it all right; hasn’t he?”
“Yes;—he has made it all right, I think. A finer fellow never lived. But he’ll tell you all about it. He travelled with a pistol in his pocket, and seemed to want it too. I suppose you must come in and see the ladies after we have been to Peacocke?”
“I suppose I can just see them,” said the young lord, as though moved by equal anxiety as to the mother and as to the daughter.
“I’ll leave word that you are here, and then we’ll go into the school.” So the Doctor found a servant, and sent what message he thought fit into the house.
“Lord Carstairs here?”
“Yes, indeed, Miss! He’s with your papa, going across to the school. He told me to take word in to Missus that he supposes his lordship will stay to dinner.” The maid who carried the tidings, and who had received no commission to convey them to Miss Mary, was, no doubt, too much interested in an affair of love, not to take them first to the one that would be most concerned with them.
That very morning Mary had been bemoaning herself as to her hard condition. Of what use was it to her to have a lover, if she was never to see him, never to hear from him—only to be told about him—that she was not to think of him more than she could help? She was already beginning to think that a long engagement carried on after this fashion would have more of suffering in it than she had anticipated. It seemed to her that while she was, and always would be, thinking of him, he never, never would continue to think of her. If it could be only a word once a month it would be something—just one or two written words under an envelope—even that would have sufficed to keep her hope alive! But never to see him;—never to hear from him! Her mother had told her that very morning that there was to be no meeting—probably for three years, till he should have done with Oxford. And here he was in the house—and her papa had sent in word to say that he was to eat his dinner there! It so astonished her that she felt that she would be afraid to meet him. Before she had had a minute to think of it all, her mother was with her. “Carstairs, love, is here!”
“Oh mamma, what has brought him?”
“He has gone into the school with your papa to see Mr. Peacocke. He always was very fond of Mr. Peacocke.” For a moment something of a feeling of jealousy crossed her heart—but only for a moment. He would not surely have come to Bowick if he had begun to be indifferent to her already! “Papa says that he will probably stay to dinner.”
“Then I am to see him?”
“Yes;—of course you must see him.”
“I didn’t know, mamma.”
“Don’t you wish to see him?”
“Oh yes, mamma. If he were to come and go, and we were not to meet at all, I should think it was all over then. Only—I don’t know what to say to him.”
“You must take that as it comes, my dear.”
Two hours afterwards they were walking, the two of them alone together, out in the Bowick woods. When once the law—which had been rather understood than spoken—had been infringed and set at naught, there was no longer any use in endeavouring to maintain a semblance of its restriction. The two young people had met in the presence both of the father and mother, and the lover had had her in his arms before either of them could interfere. There had been a little scream from Mary, but it may probably be said of her that she was at the moment the happiest young lady in the diocese.
“Does your father know you are here?” said the Doctor, as he led the young lord back from the school into the house.
“He knows I’m coming, for I wrote and told my mother. I always tell everything; but it’s sometimes best to make up your mind before you get an answer.” Then the Doctor made up his mind that Lord Carstairs would have his own way in anything that he wished to accomplish.
“Won’t the Earl be angry?” Mrs. Wortle asked.
“No;—not angry. He knows the world too well not to be quite sure that something of the kind would happen. And he is too fond of his son not to think well of anything that he does. It wasn’t to be supposed that they should never meet. After all that has passed I am bound to make him welcome if he chooses to come here, and as Mary’s lover to give him the best welcome that I can. He won’t stay, I suppose, because he has got no clothes.”
“But he has;—John brought in a portmanteau and a dressing-bag out of the gig.” So that was settled.
In the meantime Lord Carstairs
