The Lovels of Arden, Mary Elizabeth Braddon [win 10 ebook reader .txt] 📗

have been natural for me to forget you. I am very glad to meet you again under such agreeable auspices. You are going to stay at the Castle a long time, I hope. I am booked for an indefinite visit."

"O no, I don't suppose I shall stay very long. Lady Laura is extremely kind; but this is my first visit, and she must have many friends who have a greater claim upon her hospitality."

"Hale Castle is a large place, and I am sure Lady Laura has always room for agreeable guests."

"She is very, very kind. You have known her a long time, perhaps?"

"Yes. I have been intimate with the Challoners ever since I was a boy. Lady Laura was always charming; but I think her marriage with Fred Armstrong--who worships the ground she walks on--and the possession of Hale Castle have made her absolutely perfect."

"And you know her sister, Lady Geraldine, of course?"

"O yes, I know Geraldine."

"Do you know Mr. Fairfax, the gentleman to whom she is engaged?"

"Well, yes; I am supposed to have some knowledge of that individual."

Something in his smile, and a certain significance in his tone, let in a sudden light upon Clarissa's mind.

"I am afraid I am asking very foolish questions," she said. "You are Mr. Fairfax?"

"Yes, I am George Fairfax. I forgot that I had omitted to you my name that night."

"And I had no idea that I was speaking to Mr. Fairfax. You were not expected till quite late this evening."

"No; but I found my business in London easier to manage than I had supposed it would be; so, as in duty bound, I came down here directly I found myself free. When I arrived at the Castle, I was told of this picnic, and rode off at once to join the party."

"And I am keeping you here, when you ought to be looking for your friends."

"There is no hurry. I have done my duty, and am here; that is the grand point. Shall we go and look for them together?"

"If you like. I daresay we shall be returning to the Castle very soon."

They sauntered slowly away, in and out among the trees, towards a grassy glade, where there was more open space for walking, and where the afternoon sun shone warmly on the smooth turf.

"I hope you get on very well with Geraldine?" Mr. Fairfax said presently.

It was almost the same phrase Lady Laura had used about her sister.

"I have seen so little of her yet," Clarissa answered, rather embarrassed by this inquiry. "I should like to know her very much; but she only arrived yesterday, and we have scarcely spoken half-a-dozen words to each other yet."

"You will hardly like her at first, perhaps," Mr. Fairfax went on, doubtfully. "People who don't know much of her are apt to fancy her cold and proud; but to those whom she really likes she is all that is charming, and I don't think she can fail to like you."

"You are very kind to say so. I hope she may like me. Do you know, I have been so much interested in Lady Geraldine from the first, before I saw her even--partly, perhaps, because her sister told me about her engagement. You will think that very romantic and silly, I daresay."

"Not at all; a young lady is bound to be interested in that kind of thing. And I hope your interest in Lady Geraldine was not lessened when you did see her."

"It could scarcely be that. No one could help admiring her."

"Yes, she is very handsome, there is no question about that; she has been an acknowledged beauty ever since she came out. I think I can catch a glimpse of her yonder among the trees; I see a white dress and a scarlet shawl. Geraldine always had a penchant for scarlet draperies."

"Yes, that is Lady Geraldine."

They hastened their steps a little, and came presently to the circle of beeches where they had lunched, and where most of the party were now assembled, preparing for the return journey. Lady Geraldine was sauntering to and fro with Major Mason, listening with a somewhat indifferent air to that gentleman's discourse.

She caught sight of her lover the moment he appeared; and Clarissa saw the statuesque face light up with a faint flush of pleasure that brightened it wonderfully. But however pleased she might be, Lady Geraldine Challoner was the last of women to demonstrate her pleasure in her lover's arrival by any overt act. She received him with the tranquil grace of an empress, who sees only one courtier more approach the steps of her throne. They shook hands placidly, after Mr. Fairfax had shaken hands and talked for two or three minutes with Lady Laura Armstrong, who welcomed him with considerable warmth.

The major dropped quietly away from Lady Geraldine's side, and the plighted lovers strolled under the trees for a little, pending the signal for the return.

"So you know Miss Lovel?" Geraldine said, with an icy air of surprise, as soon as she and George Fairfax were alone.

"I can hardly say that I know her; our acquaintance is the merest accident," answered Mr. Fairfax; and then proceeded to relate his railway adventure.

"How very odd that she should travel alone!"

"Scarcely so odd, when you remember the fact of her father's poverty. He could not be supposed to find a maid for his daughter."

"But he might be supposed to take some care of her. He ought not to have allowed her to travel alone--at night too."

"It was careless and imprudent, no doubt. Happily she came to no harm. She was spared from any encounter with a travelling swell-mobsman, who would have garotted her for the sake of her watch and purse, or an insolent bagman, who would have made himself obnoxiously agreeable on account of her pretty face."

"I suppose she has been in the habit of going about the world by herself. That accounts for her rather strong-minded air."

"Do you find her strong-minded? I should have thought her quite gentle and womanly."

"I really know nothing about her; and I must not say anything against her. She is Laura's last _protégée_; and you know, when my sister takes any one up, it is always a case of rapture."

After this the lovers began to talk about themselves, or rather George Fairfax talked about himself, giving a detailed account of his proceedings since last they had met.

"I went down to see my uncle," he said, "the day before yesterday. He is at Lyvedon, and I had a good look at the old house. Really it is the dearest old place in the world, Geraldine, and I should like above all things to live there by-and-by, when the estate is ours. I don't think we are likely to wait very long. The poor old man is awfully shaky. He was very good to me, dear old boy, and asked all manner of kind questions about you. I think I have quite won his heart by my engagement; he regards it as a pledge of my reform."

"I am glad he is pleased," replied Lady Geraldine, in a tone that was just a shade more gracious than that in which she had spoken of Clarissa.

The summons to the carriages came almost immediately. Mr. Fairfax conducted his betrothed to her seat in the barouche, and then mounted his horse to ride back to the Castle beside her. He rode by the side of the carriage all the way, indifferent to dust; but there was not much talk between the lovers during that homeward progress, and Clarissa fancied there was a cloud upon Mr. Fairfax's countenance.

* * * * *


CHAPTER VII.


DANGEROUS GROUND.

Life was very pleasant at Hale Castle. About that one point there could be no shadow of doubt. Clarissa wondered at the brightness of her new existence; began to wonder vaguely by-and-by what it was that made it seem brighter every day. There was the usual round of amusements --dinner-parties, amateur concerts, races, flower-shows, excursions to every point of interest within a day's drive, a military ball at the garrison-town twenty miles off, perennial croquet, and gossip, and afternoon tea-drinking in arbours or marquees in the gardens, and unlimited flirtation. It was impossible for the most exacting visitor to be dull. There was always something.

And to Clarissa all these things possessed the charm of freshness. She was puzzled beyond measure by the indifference, real or simulated, of the girls who had seen half-a-dozen London seasons; the frequent declarations that these delights only bored them, that this or that party was a failure. George Fairfax watched her bright face sometimes, interested in spite of himself by her freshness.

"What a delicious thing youth is!" he said to himself. "Even if that girl were less completely lovely than she is, she would still be most charming. If Geraldine were only like that--only fresh and candid and pure, and susceptible to every new emotion! But there is an impassable gulf of ten years between them. Geraldine is quite as handsome--in her own particular style--and she talks much better than Clarissa Lovel, and is more clever, no doubt; and yet there are some men who would be bewitched by that girl before they knew where they were."

Very often after this Mr. Fairfax fell a-musing upon those apocryphal men who might be subjugated by the charms of Miss Lovel.

When did he awaken to the fatal truth that those charms were exercising a most potent influence upon his own mind? When did he open his eyes for the first time to behold his danger?

Not yet. He was really attached to Geraldine Challoner. Her society had been a kind of habit with him for several years of his life. She had been more admired than any woman he knew, and it was, in some sort, a triumph to have won her. That he never would have won her but for his brother's death he knew very well, and accepted the fact as a matter of course; a mere necessity of the world in which they lived, not as evidence of a mercenary spirit in the lady. He knew that no woman could better discharge the duties of an elevated station, or win him more social renown. To marry Geraldine Challoner was to secure for his house the stamp of fashion, for every detail of his domestic life a warrant of good taste. She had a kind of power over him too, an influence begun long ago, which had never yet been oppressive to him. And he took these things for love. He had been in love with other women during his long alliance with Lady Geraldine, and had shown more ardour in the pursuit of other flames than he had ever evinced in his courtship of her; but these more passionate attachments had come, for the most part, to a sorry end; and now he told himself that Geraldine suited him better than any other woman in the world.

"I have outgrown all foolish notions," he said to himself, believing that the capacity was dead within him for that blind unreasoning passion which poets of the Byronic school have made of love. "What I want is a wife;