having justified the journey to herself on the plea that there were circumstances in Alice’s engagement which made it desirable that she should for a while be near her niece. Her niece, as she thought, was hardly managing her own affairs discreetly.
“Well, aunt,” said Alice, as the old lady walked into the drawing-room one morning at eleven o’clock. Alice always called Lady Macleod her aunt, though, as has been before explained, there was no such close connexion between them. During Lady Macleod’s sojourn in London these morning visits were made almost every day. Alice never denied herself, and even made a point of remaining at home to receive them unless she had previously explained that she would be out; but I am not prepared to say that they were, of their own nature, agreeable to her.
“Would you mind shutting the window, my dear?” said Lady Macleod, seating herself stiffly on one of the small ugly green chairs. She had been educated at a time when easychairs were considered vicious, and among people who regarded all easy postures as being so; and she could still boast, at seventy-six, that she never leaned back. “Would you mind shutting the window? I’m so warm that I’m afraid of the draught.”
“You don’t mean to say that you’ve walked from King Street,” said Alice, doing as she was desired.
“Indeed I do,—every step of the way. Cabs are so ruinous. It’s a most unfortunate thing; they always say it’s just over the two miles here. I don’t believe a word of it, because I’m only a little more than the half-hour walking it; and those men will say anything. But how can I prove it, you know?”
“I really think it’s too far for you to walk when it’s so warm.”
“But what can I do, my dear? I must come, when I’ve specially come up to London to see you. I shall have a cab back again, because it’ll be hotter then, and dear Lady Midlothian has promised to send her carriage at three to take me to the concert. I do so wish you’d go, Alice.”
“It’s out of the question, aunt. The idea of my going in that way at the last moment, without any invitation!”
“It wouldn’t be without an invitation, Alice. The marchioness has said to me over and over again how glad she would be to see you, if I would bring you.”
“Why doesn’t she come and call if she is so anxious to know me?”
“My dear, you’ve no right to expect it; you haven’t indeed. She never calls even on me.”
“I know I’ve no right, and I don’t expect it, and I don’t want it. But neither has she a right to suppose that, under such circumstances, I shall go to her house. You might as well give it up, aunt. Cart ropes wouldn’t drag me there.”
“I think you are very wrong,—particularly under your present circumstances. A young woman that is going to be married, as you are—”
“As I am,—perhaps.”
“That’s nonsense, Alice. Of course you are; and for his sake you are bound to cultivate any advantages that naturally belong to you. As to Lady Midlothian or the marchioness coming to call on you here in your father’s house, after all that has passed, you really have no right to look for it.”
“And I don’t look for it.”
“That sort of people are not expected to call. If you’ll think of it, how could they do it with all the demands they have on their time?”
“My dear aunt, I wouldn’t interfere with their time for worlds.”
“Nobody can say of me, I’m sure, that I run after great people or rich people. It does happen that some of the nearest relations I have,—indeed I may say the nearest relations,—are people of high rank; and I do not see that I’m bound to turn away from my own flesh and blood because of that, particularly when they are always so anxious to keep up the connexion.”
“I was only speaking of myself, aunt. It is very different with you. You have known them all your life.”
“And how are you to know them if you won’t begin? Lady Midlothian said to me only yesterday that she was glad to hear that you were going to be married so respectably, and then—”
“Upon my word I’m very much obliged to her ladyship. I wonder whether she considered that she married respectably when she took Lord Midlothian?”
Now Lady Midlothian had been unfortunate in her marriage, having united herself to a man of bad character, who had used her ill, and from whom she had now been for some years separated. Alice might have spared her allusion to this misfortune when speaking of the countess to the cousin who was so fond of her, but she was angered by the application of that odious word respectable to her own prospects; and perhaps the more angered as she was somewhat inclined to feel that the epithet did suit her own position. Her engagement, she had sometimes told herself, was very respectable, and had as often told herself that it lacked other attractions which it should have possessed. She was not quite pleased with herself in having accepted John Grey,—or rather perhaps was not satisfied with herself in having loved him. In her many thoughts on the subject, she always admitted to herself that she had accepted him simply because she loved him;—that she had given her quick assent to his quick proposal simply because he had won her heart. But she was sometimes almost angry with herself that she had permitted her heart to be thus easily taken from her, and had rebuked herself for her girlish facility. But the marriage would be at any rate respectable. Mr Grey was a man of high character, of good though moderate means; he was, too, well educated, of good birth, a gentleman, and a man of talent. No one could deny that the marriage would be highly respectable, and her father had been more than satisfied. Why Miss Vavasor herself was not quite satisfied will, I hope, in time make itself appear. In the meanwhile it can be understood that Lady Midlothian’s praise would gall her.
“Alice, don’t be uncharitable,” said Lady Macleod severely. “Whatever may have been Lady Midlothian’s misfortunes no one can say they have resulted from her own fault.”
“Yes they can, aunt, if she married a man whom she knew to be a scapegrace because he was very rich and an earl.”
“She was the daughter of a nobleman herself, and only married in her own degree. But I don’t want to discuss that. She meant to be goodnatured when she mentioned your marriage, and you should take it as it was meant. After all she was only your mother’s second cousin—”
“Dear aunt, I make no claim on her cousinship.”
“But she admits the claim, and is quite anxious that you should know her. She has been at the trouble to find out everything about Mr Grey, and told me that nothing could be more satisfactory.”
“Upon my word I am very much obliged to her.”
Lady Macleod was a woman of much patience, and possessed also of considerable perseverance. For another half-hour she went on expatiating on the advantages which would accrue to Alice as a married woman from an acquaintance with her noble relatives, and endeavouring to persuade her that no better opportunity than the present would present itself. There would be a place in Lady Midlothian’s carriage, as none other of the daughters were going but Lady Jane. Lady Midlothian would take it quite as a compliment, and a concert was not like a ball or any customary party. An unmarried girl might very properly go to a concert under such circumstances as now existed without any special invitation. Lady Macleod ought to have known her adopted niece better. Alice was immoveable. As a matter of course she was immoveable. Lady Macleod had seldom been able to persuade her to anything, and ought to have been well sure that, of all things, she could not have persuaded her to this.
Then, at last, they came to another subject, as to which Lady Macleod declared that she had specially come on this special morning, forgetting, probably, that she had already made the same assertion with reference to the concert. But in truth the last assertion was the correct one, and on that other subject she had been hurried on to say more than she meant by the eagerness of the moment. All the morning she had been full of the matter on which she was now about to speak. She had discussed it quite at length