Ethelberta, having arrived there some time earlier, had gone straight to her aunt, whom she found sitting behind a large ledger in the office, making up the accounts with her husband, a well-framed reflective man with a grey beard. M. Moulin bustled, waited for her remarks and replies, and made much of her in a general way, when Ethelberta said, what she had wanted to say instantly, 'Has a gentleman called Mr. Neigh been here?'
'O yes--I think it is Neigh--there's a card upstairs,' replied her aunt. 'I told him you were alone at the cathedral, and I believe he walked that way. Besides that one, another has come for you--a Mr.
Ladywell, and he is waiting.'
'Not for me?'
'Yes, indeed. I thought he seemed so anxious, under a sort of assumed calmness, that I recommended him to remain till you came in.'
'Goodness, aunt; why did you?' Ethelberta said, and thought how much her mother's sister resembled her mother in doings of that sort.
'I thought he had some good reason for seeing you. Are these men intruders, then?'
'O no--a woman who attempts a public career must expect to be treated as public property: what would be an intrusion on a domiciled gentlewoman is a tribute to me. You cannot have celebrity and sex-privilege both.' Thus Ethelberta laughed off the awkward conjuncture, inwardly deploring the unconscionable maternal meddling which had led to this, though not resentfully, for she had too much staunchness of heart to decry a parent's misdirected zeal. Had the clanship feeling been universally as strong as in the Chickerel family, the fable of the well-bonded fagot might have remained unwritten.
Ladywell had sent her a letter about getting his picture of herself engraved for an illustrated paper, and she had not replied, considering that she had nothing to do with the matter, her form and feature having been given in the painting as no portrait at all, but as those of an ideal. To see him now would be vexatious; and yet it was chilly and formal to an ungenerous degree to keep aloof from him, sitting lonely in the same house. 'A few weeks hence,' she thought, 'when Menlove's disclosures make me ridiculous, he may slight me as a lackey's girl, an upstart, an adventuress, and hardly return my bow in the street. Then I may wish I had given him no personal cause for additional bitterness.' So, putting off the fine lady, Ethelberta thought she would see Ladywell at once.
Ladywell was unaffectedly glad to meet her; so glad, that Ethelberta wished heartily, for his sake, there could be warm friendship between herself and him, as well as all her lovers, without that insistent courtship-and-marriage question, which sent them all scattering like leaves in a pestilent blast, at enmity with one another. She was less pleased when she found that Ladywell, after saying all there was to say about his painting, gently signified that he had been misinformed, as he believed, concerning her future intentions, which had led to his absenting himself entirely from her; the remark being of course, a natural product of her mother's injudicious message to him.
She cut him short with terse candour. 'Yes,' she said, 'a false report is in circulation. I am not yet engaged to be married to any one, if that is your meaning.'
Ladywell looked cheerful at this frank answer, and said tentatively, 'Am I forgotten?'
'No; you are exactly as you always were in my mind.'
'Then I have been cruelly deceived. I was guided too much by appearances, and they were very delusive. I am beyond measure glad I came here to-day. I called at your house and learnt that you were here; and as I was going out of town, in any indefinite direction, Isettled then to come this way. What a happy idea it was! To think of you now--and I may be permitted to--'
'Assuredly you may not. How many times I have told you that!'
'But I do not wish for any formal engagement,' said Ladywell quickly, fearing she might commit herself to some expression of positive denial, which he could never surmount. 'I'll wait--I'll wait any length of time. Remember, you have never absolutely forbidden my--friendship. Will you delay your answer till some time hence, when you have thoroughly considered; since I fear it may be a hasty one now?'
'Yes, indeed; it may be hasty.'
'You will delay it?'
'Yes.'
'When shall it be?'
'Say a month hence. I suggest that, because by that time you will have found an answer in your own mind: strange things may happen before then. "She shall follow after her lovers, but she shall not overtake them; and she shall seek them, but shall not find them;then shall she say, I will go and return to my first"--however, that's no matter.'
'What--did you--?' Ladywell began, altogether bewildered by this.
'It is a passage in Hosea which came to my mind, as possibly applicable to myself some day,' she answered. 'It was mere impulse.'
'Ha-ha!--a jest--one of your romances broken loose. There is no law for impulse: that is why I am here.'
Thus fancifully they conversed till the interview concluded.
Getting her to promise that she would see him again, Ladywell retired to a sitting-room on the same landing, in which he had been writing letters before she came up. Immediately upon this her aunt, who began to suspect that something peculiar was in the wind, came to tell her that Mr. Neigh had been inquiring for her again.
'Send him in,' said Ethelberta.
Neigh's footsteps approached, and the well-known figure entered.
Ethelberta received him smilingly, for she was getting so used to awkward juxtapositions that she treated them quite as a natural situation. She merely hoped that Ladywell would not hear them talking through the partition.
Neigh scarcely said anything as a beginning: she knew his errand perfectly; and unaccountable as it was to her, the strange and unceremonious relationship between them, that had originated in the peculiar conditions of their first close meeting, was continued now as usual.
'Have you been able to bestow a thought on the question between us?
I hope so,' said Neigh.
