Lord Forgue and lady Arctura.
At the castle things fell into their
old routine. Nothing had been arranged between
lord Forgue and Eppy, and he seemed content that it
should be so. Mrs. Brookes told him that she had
gone home: he made neither remark nor inquiry,
manifesting no interest.
It would be well his father should
not see it necessary to push things farther!
He did not want to turn out of the castle! Without
means, what was he to do? The marriage could
not be to-day or to-morrow! and in the meantime he
could see Eppy, perhaps more easily than at the castle!
He would contrive! He was sorry he had hurt the
old fellow, but he could not help it! he would get
in the way! Things would have been much worse
if he had not got first to his father! He would
wait a bit, and see what would turn up! For the
tutor-fellow, he must not quarrel with him downright!
No good would come of that! In the end he would
have his way! and that in spite of them all!
But what he really wanted he did not
know. He only knew, or imagined, that he was
over head and ears in love with the girl: what
was to come of it was all in the clouds. He had
said he meant to marry her; but to that statement
he had been driven, more than he knew, by the desire
to escape the contempt of the tutor he scorned; and
he rejoiced that he had at least discomfited him.
He knew that if he did marry Eppy, or any one else
of whom his father did not approve, he had nothing
to look for but absolute poverty, for he knew no way
to earn money; he was therefore unprepared to defy
him immediately whatever he might do by
and by. He said to himself sometimes that he was
as willing as any man to work for his wife if only
he knew how; but when he said so, had he always a
clear vision of Eppy as the wife in prospect?
Alas, it would take years to make him able to earn
even a woman’s wages! It would be a fine
thing for a lord to labour like a common man for the
support of a child of the people for whom he had sacrificed
everything; but where was the possibility? When
thoughts like these grew too many for him, Forgue
wished he had never seen the girl. His heart would
immediately reproach him; immediately he would comfort
his conscience with the reflection that to wish he
had never seen her was a very different thing from
wishing to act as if he had. He loafed about in
her neighbourhood as much as he dared, haunted the
house itself in the twilight, and at night even ventured
sometimes to creep up the stair, but for some time
he never even saw her: for days Eppy never went
out of doors except into the garden.
Though she had not spoken of it, Arctura
had had more than a suspicion that something was going
on between her cousin and the pretty maid; for the
little window of her sitting room partially overlooked
a certain retired spot favoured of the lovers; and
after Eppy left the house, Davie, though he did not
associate the facts, noted that she was more cheerful
than before. But there was no enlargement of intercourse
between her and Forgue. They knew it was the wish
of the head of the house that they should marry, but
the earl had been wise enough to say nothing openly
to either of them: he believed the thing would
have a better chance on its own merits; and as yet
they had shown no sign of drawing to each other.
It might, perhaps, have been otherwise on his part
had not the young lord been taken with the pretty housemaid,
though at first he had thought of nothing more than
a little passing flirtation, reckoning his advantage
with her by the height on which he stood in his own
regard; but it was from no jealousy that Arctura was
relieved by the departure of Eppy. She had never
seen anything attractive in her cousin, and her religious
impressions would have been enough to protect her
from any drawing to him: had they not poisoned
in her even the virtue of common house-friendliness
toward a very different man? The sense of relief
she had when Eppy went, lay in being delivered from
the presence of something clandestine, with which she
could not interfere so far as to confess knowledge
of it. It had rendered her uneasy; she had felt
shy and uncomfortable. Once or twice she had
been on the point of saying to Mrs. Brookes that she
thought her cousin and Eppy very oddly familiar, but
had failed of courage. It was no wonder therefore
that she should be more cheerful.