Somewhere near Ingleside Captain Ivie had met with a riding accident, had been carried to the manse, and had been carefully nursed and tended by the pastor’s only daughter. It was an old story: the patient got well and the nurse fell sick, but with another complaint, and then there had followed a little love episode (one among a thousand in the captain’s life) which he was pleased to declare was now “all over and done with.”
It was very true that the surveillance over Lettice towards the end of the season had been severe, and Lettice had rebelled against it proportionately. Her opportunities for meeting either the captain or Miss Lilla had considerably dwindled owing to the tact and determination of Aunt Rosamond, who resolutely refused all invitations for Lettice where she thought there was the slightest chance of encountering the McCormacks.
On the one or two occasions, however, that Lettice and Captain Ivie had met it must be admitted that they each made the most of their opportunity.
“They’ll frown and look savage if I dance with you, Captain McCormack, and scold me all the way home. (They always begin when we’re all shut in together, and they know I can’t get away.) But I won’t dance with anyone else tonight, I promise you that.” And Lettice would keep her word, and to everyone who came up “Hoping they might have the pleasure,” she would be “Oh, so sorry, but I really am too tired,” and she would sit as a wallflower for the rest of the evening.
“Can she really be in love with the man?” wondered Aunt Rosamond more than once; “and is she really clever enough to be laying her plans to marry him?” So dispensing with Goodwood and the last few balls of the season the lady hurried on their departure to the North, and a full ten days before the London world had spread its wings to take flight they were fairly ensconced as members of the Rosneath household.
“Oh, this is like dear old Wales again!” exclaimed Lettice as the blue Auchterils burst upon her view with their layers of grey mist towering peak over peak above the silent lakes. “Auntie Judie, I really think I must have been getting homesick without knowing it. I have been so good and quiet lately, but those darling little hills will wake me up to life again, and you really won’t be able to hold me in now.”
“Won’t be able to hold her in now! Heavens!” groaned Aunt Rosamond in spirit, “have we ever been able to do so? What can a good Providence have in store for us now, I wonder?”
This question, however, was fated to have a very speedy solution, for Aunt Rosamond had scarcely begun to feel at home at Rosneath, had only just had time to choose a comfortable light corner for her writing-desk in the morning-room and a particular reclining-chair in the drawing-room for her own special use, when, to her unspeakable horror, Mrs. Rosneath announced the fact that Captain McCormack had taken Ingleside for the shooting season.
“Taken Ingleside! that man!” exclaimed Aunt Rosamond, in her surprise betraying herself. “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Rosneath,” she added, “if he is a friend of yours, but he has made himself a little unpleasant to me.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” replied her hostess, “because we all like Captain Ivie so much. He is an old friend of my husband’s—a little fast perhaps, but still so delightful.”
“Lettice,” interrogated Aunt Rosamond, as soon as she found herself alone with her niece, “did you know the McCormacks had taken Ingleside, and would be down upon us here in a day or two?”
“Oh yes, auntie,” laughed Lettice, “I knew it two days ago. Lilla wrote and told me they were coming, but I didn’t say a word to you lest you should carry me off bodily just as I had begun to have a little fun.”
Aunt Rosamond paused to collect her thoughts, frowning severely as she did so.
“Aunt Rosamond,” pleaded Lettice, thinking a little explanation might be timely, “if you only knew—”
“I know exactly what that man is and what he is trying to do, Lettice,” said Aunt Rosamond angrily; “and let me tell you, once for all, that I will not for the rest of the time you are under my care allow the slightest approach to a flirtation on your part with him.”
“Auntie,” said Lettice, batting a tennis-ball high in the air as she spoke—they were standing together on the lawn—“I’ve told you over and over again that I can’t flirt, and never shall be able to. The only reason I”—here another ball was sent into the neighbouring bushes—“like to talk to Captain McCormack is”—a third ball rises and falls and is sent off again—“that he once knew that dear old Doctor Herron who is taking such care of papa, and we are always talking about him all the time you think I am flirting.” Here Lettice put both little hands into her tennis-apron’s pocket. “Auntie, all the balls are gone; I’m so sorry, but I must run and find them while I remember where they are,” and away she flew.
And Miss Tremarten, left standing alone in the sunshine under a big green umbrella, tried to see her way out of the difficulties which beset her on every side. “If she goes back to Wales free and unfettered she will be certain to marry that country doctor,” she argued to herself; “if she sees much more of that captain it will end in an elopement I’m convinced, and if I take her from here tomorrow she will lose all chance of winning the” (mark, not that) “earl. Is there any possible road out of such a maze of troubles?”
So the old lady stood thinking and thinking in the bright sunshine with the birds twittering all round her. The sound of young
