dear Honor,—Many thanks for wishing for your will-o’-th’-wisp again, but it is going to dance off in another direction. Rashe and I are bound to the west of Ireland, as soon as Charles’s inauguration is over at Castle Blanch; an odd jumble of festivities it is to be, but Lolly is just cockney enough to be determinedly rural, and there’s sure to be some fun to be got out of it; besides, I am pacified by having my special darling, Edna Murrell, the lovely schoolmistress at Wrapworth, to sing to them. How Mr. Calthorp will admire her, as long as he thinks she is Italian! It will be hard if I can’t get a rise out of some of them! This being the case, I have not a moment for coming home; but I send some contributions for the prize-giving, some stunning articles from the Lowther Arcade. The gutta-percha face is for Billy Harrison, whether in disgrace or not. He deserves compensation for his many weary hours of Sunday School, and it may suggest a new art for beguiling the time. Mind you tell him it is from me, with my love; and bestow the rest on all the chief reprobates. I wish I could see them; but you have no loss, you know how unedifying I am. Kiss Ponto for me, and ask Robin for his commands to Connaught. I know his sulkiness will transpire through Phœbe. Love to that dear little Cinderella, and tell her mamma and Juliana, that if she does not come out this winter, Mrs. Fulmort shall have no peace and Juliana no partners. Please to look in my room for my great nailed boots and hedging-gloves, also for the pig’s wool in the left-hand drawer of the cabinet, and send them to me before the end of next week. Owen would give his ears to come with us, but gentlemen would only obstruct Irish chivalry; I am only afraid there is no hope of a faction fight. Mr. Saville called yesterday, so I made him dine here, and sung him into raptures. What a dear old Don he is!
The second letter stood thus:—
‘My dear miss Charlecote,—I have seen Lawrence on your business, and he will prepare the leases for your signature. He suggests that it might be more satisfactory to wait, in case you should be coming to town, so that you might have a personal meeting with the parties; but this will be for you to determine. I came up from – College on Wednesday, having much enjoyed my visit. Oxford is in many respects a changed place, but as long as our old Head remains to us, I am sure of a gratifying welcome, and I saw many old friends. I exchanged cards with Owen Sandbrook, but only saw him as we met in the street, and a very fine-looking youth he is, a perfect Hercules, and the champion of his college in all feats of strength; likely, too, to stand well in the class list. His costume was not what we should once have considered academical; but his is a daring set, intellectual as well as bodily, and the clever young men of the present day are not what they were in my time. It is gratifying to hear how warmly and affectionately he talks of you. I do not know how far you have undertaken the supplies, but I give you a hint that a warning on that subject might not be inappropriate, unless they have come into some great accession of fortune on their uncle’s death. I ventured to call upon the young lady in Lowndes Square, and was most graciously received, and asked to dinner by the young Mrs. Charteris. It was a most récherché dinner in the new Italian fashion, which does not quite approve itself to me. “Regardless of expense,” seems to be the family motto. Your pupil sings better than ever, and knew how to keep her hold of my heart, though I suspected her of patronizing the old parson to pique her more brilliant admirers, whom she possesses in plenty; and no wonder, for she is pretty enough to turn any man’s head and shows to great advantage beside her cousin, Miss Charteris. I hope you will be able to prevent the cousins from really undertaking the wild plan of travelling alone in Ireland, for the sake, they say, of salmon-fishing. I should have thought them not in earnest, but girls are as much altered as boys from the days of my experience, and brothers, too; for Mr. Charteris seemed to view the scheme very coolly; but, as I told my friend Lucilla, I hope you will bring her to reason. I hope your hay-crop promises favourably.
No wonder that these letters made loneliness more lonely!
‘Oh, that Horatia!’ exclaimed she, almost aloud. ‘Oh, that Captain Charteris were available! No one else ever had any real power with Lucy! It was an unlucky day when he saw that colonial young lady, and settled down in Vancouver’s Island! And yet how I used to wish him away, with the surly independence he was always infusing into Owen. Wanting to take him out there, indeed! And yet, and yet—I sometimes doubt whether I did right to set my personal influence over my dear affectionate boy so much in opposition to his uncle—Mr. Charteris was on my side, though! And I always took care to have it clearly understood that it was his education alone that I undertook. What can Mr. Saville mean?—The supplies? Owen knows what he has to trust to, but I can talk to him. A daring set!—Yes, everything appears daring to an old-world man like Mr. Saville. I am sure of my Owen; with our happy home Sundays. I know I am his Sweet Honey still. And yet’—then hastily turning from that dubious ‘and yet’—‘Owen is the only chance for his sister. She does care for him; and he will view this mad scheme in the right light. Shall I meet him at the beginning of the vacation, and see what he can do with Lucy? Mr. Saville thinks I ought to be in London, and I think I might be useful to the Parsonses. I suppose I must; but it is a heart-ache to be at St. Wulstan’s. One is used to it here; and there are the poor people, and the farm, and the garden—yes, and those dear nightingales—and you, poor Ponto! One is used to it here, but St. Wulstan’s is a fresh pain, and so is coming back. But, if it be in the way of right, and to save poor Lucy, it must be, and it is what life is made of. It is a “following of the funeral” of the hopes that sprang up after my spring-time. Is it my chastisement, or is it my training? Alas! maybe I took those children more for myself than for duty’s sake! May it all be for their true good in the end, whatever it may be with me. And now I will not dream. It is of no use save to unnerve me. Let me go to my book. It must be a story to-night. I cannot fix my attention yet.’
As she rose, however, her face brightened at the sight of two advancing figures, and she went forward to meet them.
One was a long, loosely-limbed youth of two-and-twenty, with broad shoulders, a heavy overhanging brow, dark gray serious eyes, and a mouth scarcely curved, and so fast shut as to disclose hardly any lip. The hair was dark and lank; the air was of ungainly force, that had not yet found its purpose, and therefore was not at ease; and but for the educated cast of countenance he would have had a peasant look, in the brown, homely undress garb, which to most youths of his age would have been becoming.
With him was a girl, tall, slim, and lightly made, though of nicely rounded figure. In height she looked like seventeen, but her dress was more childish than usual at that age; and the contour of her smooth cheeks and short rounded chin, her long neck, her happy blue eyes, fully opened like those of a child, her fair rosy skin and fresh simple air, might almost have belonged to seven years old: and there was all the earnestness, innocence, and careless ease of childhood in her movements and gestures, as she sprang forward to meet Miss Charlecote, exclaiming, ‘Robin said I might come.’
‘And very right of him. You are both come to tea?’ she added, in affirmative interrogation, as she shook hands with the young man.
‘No, thank you,’ he answered; ‘at least I only brought Phœbe, having rescued her from Miss Fennimore’s clutches. I must be at dinner. But I will come again for her.’ And he yawned wearily.
‘I will drive her back; you are tired.’
‘No!’ he said. ‘At least the walk is one of the few tolerable things there is. I’ll come as soon as I can escape, Phœbe. Past seven—I must go!’
‘Can’t you stay? I could find some food for you.’
‘No, thank you,’ he still said; ‘I do not know whether Mervyn will come home, and there must not be too many empty chairs. Good-bye!’ and he walked off with long strides, but with stooping shoulders, and an air of dejection almost amounting to discontent.
‘Poor Robin!’ said Honora, ‘I wish he could have stayed.’
‘He would have liked