Part 12 (2/2)

So far everything had happened as antic.i.p.ated. There had been no hitch anywhere, and to all appearances the little scheme would be brought to a successful issue.

Sir Charles kept Gervase well posted up as to the course of events.

”She has not the remotest idea that we have any designs upon her,” he said, in one of his early letters. ”If she got the smallest hint I fear she might jib. She has grown to be a remarkably handsome girl, high spirited and intelligent. There is n.o.body here to whom she will lose her heart, and I am keeping her as secluded as possible till you return. I trust to you to put as much warmth in your letters to her as you think advisable. At present she thinks the world of you. I am sure of it. You impressed her mightily when you were in the States. She regards you as a sort of saint and hero rolled into one. She thinks also that you are immensely clever. Hence it is rather a difficult _role_ you will have to play. By letter you can do a great deal between now and the new year.

Keep up the idealism. She is very puritanic in some of her notions.

Don't shock her, for the world. If you can arrange an engagement before you return so much the better. A long courts.h.i.+p, I fear, might spoil everything. She has sharp eyes; and yet you have to guard against being too precipitate. So far, I flatter myself we have both handled the matter with great delicacy. A few months more, and--with care and judgment, you may snap your fingers at the world.”

Sir Charles had rightly estimated her character in one respect. If Madeline had had the smallest suspicion that he and his son had designs upon her--that a deliberate plot was being hatched--her indignation would have known no bounds.

But her own little secret had been, perhaps, the best safeguard against any such suspicion. To her ingenuous mind the world was the best of all possible places. Her friends had so arranged her life and her lot that everything appeared to be working together for the best. She had not to worry about anything. The Captain's letters had as much warmth in them as she could desire. Her future, shaped for her without any contriving of her own--shaped by friends and by Providence, left nothing to be desired.

It was clear what the Captain wished. It would have pleased her father had he been alive, it would be satisfactory to Sir Charles, it would fit in with her own conception of life. So she would dance along the primrose way without a want, without a care, without a responsibility.

There would be gaiety, and mirth, and music, b.a.l.l.s and crushes, and social functions of all sorts and kinds. She would get into social circles she had never known before, and be ”Lady” Tregony before she died.

It was all as straight as a rule, and as clear as a sunbeam.

Why had it never seemed empty and sordid and selfish until to-night? Why did her inward eyes look for a sterner and more heroic way? Why did pleasure look so uninviting and duty wear such a n.o.ble mien? Why was all her future outlook changed as in a flash?

These were questions she was debating with herself when a new day stole into the room.

CHAPTER IX

THE CAPTAIN'S LETTER

A few days later, Madeline received a letter from Captain Tregony, which contained a carefully-worded, though very definite, proposal of marriage. Gervase had been only too pleased to carry out his father's suggestion. The prospect of fingering at an early date a few of her surplus dollars was a very tempting one. He was not particularly in love with her. He had got through the sentimental age, so he believed.

Moreover, he had seen so much of life and the world, and had had such a wide and varied experience of feminine kind that he was not likely to be carried off his feet by a pretty face or engaging manners.

Nevertheless, if he was to marry at all--and since he was an only son and heir to a t.i.tle and estates, marriage seemed a very obvious duty--then there was no one, all things considered, he would sooner take to his heart and endow with all his worldly goods than Madeline Grover.

She was very young, very pretty, very sweet-tempered, and, best of all, very rich; and he knew no one else who possessed such a combination of excellencies.

It had been a great relief to him when he went out to America to make the acquaintance of John Grover's daughter, to discover that she was such an unspoiled child of nature. He had been haunted by the fear that she might be ugly or ignorant or uneducated. Hence, when he found a charming school-girl, ingenuous, unsophisticated, impressionable, he heaved a big sigh of relief, and set to work at once to make a favourable and an abiding impression.

He would have proposed then and there had he considered it politic to do so. His father, however, who was his chief adviser, would not hear of it. ”You will spoil the whole game if you do,” Sir Charles insisted.

”Make a good impression now, and let time and absence deepen it. She will put a halo round your head after a few weeks' absence, and eagerly look forward to the next meeting.”

In this Sir Charles showed his knowledge of human nature, especially of feminine human nature.

Gervase had hinted that, if he was not getting old, he was getting distinctly older, that the crows'-feet were very marked about his eyes, and that his hair was getting decidedly thin.

”My dear boy,” Sir Charles said, affectionately, ”that is all in your favour. If she were eight or nine and twenty, she might cast longing eyes on the youths, but a girl of seventeen always dotes on an elderly man. Always! I don't know why it should be so, but I simply state a fact. Girls have not a particle of reverence or even respect for youths of twenty-one or two. They sigh for a man who bears the scars of years and battle.”

So Gervase went away to India, leaving his father to work the oracle for him at home. On the whole, Sir Charles's forecast had proved correct.

Things had turned out much as he antic.i.p.ated they would.

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