Framley Parsonage, Anthony Trollope [popular e readers txt] 📗

elbow⁠—if he consented to receive Lord Lufton as the acknowledged suitor of his sister? It would be a great match for Lucy, doubtless; but⁠—Indeed, he could not bring himself to believe that Lucy could in truth become the absolute reigning queen of Framley Court.

“Do you think that Fanny knows anything of all this?” he said, after a moment or two.

“I cannot possibly tell. If she does it is not with my knowledge. I should have thought that you could best answer that.”

“I cannot answer it at all,” said Mark. “I, at least, have had no remotest idea of such a thing.”

“Your ideas of it now need not be at all remote,” said Lord Lufton, with a faint smile; “and you may know it as a fact. I did make her an offer of marriage; I was refused; I am going to repeat it; and I am now taking you into my confidence, in order that, as her brother, and as my friend, you may give me such assistance as you can.” They then walked on in silence for some yards, after which Lord Lufton added: “And now I’ll dine with you today if you wish it.”

Mr. Robarts did not know what to say; he could not bethink himself what answer duty required of him. He had no right to interfere between his sister and such a marriage, if she herself should wish it; but still there was something terrible in the thought of it! He had a vague conception that it must come to evil; that the project was a dangerous one; and that it could not finally result happily for any of them. What would Lady Lufton say? That undoubtedly was the chief source of his dismay.

“Have you spoken to your mother about this?” he said.

“My mother? no; why speak to her till I know my fate? A man does not like to speak much of such matters if there be a probability of his being rejected. I tell you because I do not like to make my way into your house under a false pretence.”

“But what would Lady Lufton say?”

“I think it probable that she would be displeased on the first hearing it; that in four-and-twenty hours she would be reconciled; and that after a week or so Lucy would be her dearest favourite and the prime minister of all her machinations. You don’t know my mother as well as I do. She would give her head off her shoulders to do me a pleasure.”

“And for that reason,” said Mark Robarts, “you ought, if possible, to do her pleasure.”

“I cannot absolutely marry a wife of her choosing, if you mean that,” said Lord Lufton.

They went on walking about the garden for an hour, but they hardly got any farther than the point to which we have now brought them. Mark Robarts could not make up his mind on the spur of the moment; nor, as he said more than once to Lord Lufton, could he be at all sure that Lucy would in any way be guided by him. It was, therefore, at last settled between them that Lord Lufton should come to the parsonage immediately after breakfast on the following morning. It was agreed also that the dinner had better not come off, and Robarts promised that he would, if possible, have determined by the morning as to what advice he would give his sister.

He went direct home to the parsonage from Framley Court, feeling that he was altogether in the dark till he should have consulted his wife. How would he feel if Lucy were to become Lady Lufton? and how would he look Lady Lufton in the face in telling her that such was to be his sister’s destiny? On returning home he immediately found his wife, and had not been closeted with her five minutes before he knew, at any rate, all that she knew.

“And you mean to say that she does love him?” said Mark.

“Indeed she does; and is it not natural that she should? When I saw them so much together I feared that she would. But I never thought that he would care for her.”

Even Fanny did not as yet give Lucy credit for half her attractiveness. After an hour’s talking the interview between the husband and wife ended in a message to Lucy, begging her to join them both in the book-room.

“Aunt Lucy,” said a chubby little darling, who was taken up into his aunt’s arms as he spoke, “papa and mamma ’ant ’oo in te tuddy, and I musn’t go wis ’oo.”

Lucy, as she kissed the boy and pressed his face against her own, felt that her blood was running quick to her heart.

“Musn’t ’oo go wis me, my own one?” she said, as she put her playfellow down; but she played with the child only because she did not wish to betray even to him that she was hardly mistress of herself. She knew that Lord Lufton was at Framley; she knew that her brother had been to him; she knew that a proposal had been made that he should come there that day to dinner. Must it not therefore be the case that this call to a meeting in the study had arisen out of Lord Lufton’s arrival at Framley? and yet, how could it have done so? Had Fanny betrayed her in order to prevent the dinner invitation? It could not be possible that Lord Lufton himself should have spoken on the subject! And then she again stooped to kiss the child, rubbed her hands across her forehead to smooth her hair, and erase, if that might be possible, the look of care which she wore, and then descended slowly to her brother’s sitting-room.

Her hand paused for a second on the door ere she opened it, but she had resolved that, come what might, she would be brave. She pushed it open and walked in with a bold front, with eyes wide open, and a slow step.

“Frank