Part 46 (2/2)

'One has no windows in one through which one's friends can look in at one,' she says philosophically, 'even if they would take the trouble.

Mrs. Evans perhaps would take the trouble; I do not know any one else that would. As long as one is not foolish outside, it does not matter; and I am not foolish outside.'

August is here; and the sacred seat under the Judas-tree, the seat that had been forbidden to Peggy during her one triumph-hour, is again occupied: save in the dead of the night has, for the last five days, been scarcely a moment unoccupied; and Prue's little cup--the cup that had run as low as mountain-springs in a droughty summer--again brims over.

'It is so much better than if he had never gone away,' she says rapturously, 'for then I might have thought that he liked me only because he had never seen anything better; but now that he has had all the most beautiful ladies in London at his feet----'

'Has he indeed?' rejoins Peggy, smiling; 'does he tell you so?'

But she has not the heart to suggest that the present emptiness of the Manor of all inmates, except himself and his aunt, may count for even more in Mr. Ducane's a.s.siduities than his indifference to the London beauties.

One afternoon she has left the young pair cooing on their rustic seat as usual, and has betaken herself to the Manor, on one of her mixed errands of parish business and individual friendliness to its mistress. She finds the old lady surrounded by all the signs and symptoms of a new hobby--plans, encaustic tiles, designs for the decorated pans and skimmers of an ornamental dairy.

'I have a new toy, my dear!--congratulate me!' says she, looking up from the litter around her, almost as radiant as Prue; 'an ornamental dairy-house! I cannot think how I have lived without it for sixty-five years! After all, there is nothing like a new toy; you would not be the worse for one,' she adds, glancing kindly at the girl's face, a little oldened and jaded since this time last year, its beauty lending itself even less than it had then done to Lady Betty's sarcasm about being improved by being bled. 'And Prue?--how is Prue? She is not in want of a new toy _par hasard_?--still quite satisfied with the old one, eh? Well, he is a very ingenious piece of mechanism!'

'Very!' replies Peggy drily.

'And when are the banns to be put up?' inquires the old lady abruptly, resting her arms upon the heap of her plans and estimates, and pus.h.i.+ng up her spectacles on her forehead, in order to get a directer view of her young _vis-a-vis_. 'I should like to have a week's notice, in order to get myself a new gown; Mason was telling me this morning that I have not one that can be depended upon to hold together.'

'The banns?' repeats Peggy, a flush of pleasure spreading over her face; 'then he has told you! Oh, I am so glad! I was afraid that he would not!'

'Told me!' repeats the elder woman, with a withering intonation; 'not he!--trust him for that! No doubt he has some high-falutin' reason for not doing so; it would wound my feelings!--it would be dangerous at my age! He had rather efface himself and his own interests for ever than roughen, by one additional pebble, my path to the grave!' mimicking, with ludicrous insuccess, Freddy's round young tones. 'Told me?--not he!' The tinge brought into Peggy's face by that emotion of transient satisfaction of which milady's words have proved the fallaciousness, dies out of it again. 'n.o.body has told me,' continues the old lady tranquilly; 'I have only taken the liberty of seeing what was directly under my nose. No offence to you, Peggy; but I had quite as soon not have seen it.'

'Of course--of course,' replies Peggy, flus.h.i.+ng again.

'I suppose that we have no one but ourselves to thank,' says milady, with philosophy, her eye returning affectionately to one of the designs for the front of her hobby. 'I do not care about that one; it is too florid--it would look like Rosherville. Throw two selfish idle young fools together, and the result has been the same since Adam's time!'

Peggy's heart swells. Idle and selfis.h.!.+ Never, even in the most secret depths of her own mind, has she connected such epithets with her Prue; and here is milady applying them to her as if they were truisms.

'I must send him away somewhere, I suppose,' pursues Lady Roupell, with a rather impatient sigh. 'He is an expensive luxury, is Master Freddy, as your poor little Prue would find; but no doubt it will come cheaper in the end. Give him a couple of hundred pounds, and pack him off on a voyage round the world! Believe me, dear,' laying her hand--whose tan, contracted by an inveterate aversion for gloves, contrasts oddly with its flas.h.i.+ng diamonds--compa.s.sionately on Peggy's shoulder, 'he would have clean forgotten her before he had got out of the chops of the Channel.'

A great lump has sprung into Peggy's throat, constricting the muscles.

'And she?'

The old woman shrugs her shoulders.

'When we are forgotten, child, we do the graceful thing, and forget too.

I suppose we all know a little about that.'

Margaret has picked up one of the Dutch tiles that are to line the walls of milady's new plaything; but it is but a blurred view that she gets of its uncouth blue figures.

'She would not forget,' she says in a low voice, that, low as it is, has yet been won with difficulty from that seeming mountain in her throat; 'she has put all--everything into one boat! Oh! poor Prue, to have put everything into one boat!'

'And such a boat!' adds milady expressively.

For all rejoinder, Peggy fairly bursts out crying. The acc.u.mulated misery of weeks, so carefully pent and dammed in the channels of her aching heart, breaks down her poor fortifications. Her own life-venture hopelessly perished! Prue's foundering on the high seas before her very eyes! She had not cried for herself; she may, at least, have leave to cry for Prue.

'G.o.d bless my soul, Peggy!' says the elder woman, taking off and laying down her spectacles, and speaking with an accent of p.r.o.nounced surprise and indignation; 'you do not mean to say that you are going to _cry_!

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