"Rachel," said Alick, as they wandered in the twilight garden, "I wonder if you would be greatly disappointed if our travels ended here."
"I am only too glad of the quiet."
"Because Lifford is in great need of thorough rest. He has not been away for more than a year, and now he is getting quite knocked up. All he does care to do, is to take lodgings near his wife's asylum, poor man, and see her occasionally: sad work, but it is rest, and winds him up again; and there is no one but myself to whom he likes to leave my uncle. Strangers always do too little or too much; and there is a young man at Littleworthy for the long vacation who can help on a Sunday."
"Oh, pray let us stay as long as we can!"
"Giving up the Cretins?"
"It is no sacrifice. I am thankful not to be hunted about; and if anything could make me better pleased to be here, it would be feeling that I was not hindering you."
"Then I will hunt him away for six weeks or two months at least. It will be a great relief to my uncle's mind."
It was so great a relief that Mr. Clare could hardly bring himself to accept the sacrifice of the honeymoon, and though there could be little doubt which way the discussion would end, he had not yielded when the ponies bore off Rachel on Monday morning.
Timber End was certainly a delightful place. Alick had railed it a cockney villa, but it was in good taste, and very fair and sweet with flowers and shade. Bessie's own rooms, where she made Rachel charmingly at home, were wonderful in choiceness and elegance, exciting Rachel's surprise how it could be possible to be so sumptuously lodged in such a temporary abode, for the house was only hired for a few months, while Gowanbrae was under repair. It was within such easy reach of London that Bessie had been able from thence to go through the more needful season gaieties; and she had thought it wise, both for herself and Lord Keith, not to enter on their full course. It sounded very moderate and prudent, and Rachel felt vexed with herself and Alick for recollecting a certain hint of his, that Lady Keith felt herself more of a star in her own old neighbourhood than she could be in London, and wisely abstained from a full flight till she had tried her wings. It was much pleasanter to go along with Bessie's many far better and more affectionate reasons for prudence, and her minutely personal confidences about her habits, hopes, and fears, given with a strong sense of her own importance and consideration, yet with a warm sisterly tone that made them tokens of adoption, and with an arch drollery that invested them with a sort of grace. The number of engagements that she mentioned in town and country did indeed seem inconsistent with the prudence she spoke of with regard to her own health, or with her attention to that of her husband; but it appeared that all were quite necessary and according to his wishes, and the London ones were usually for the sake of trying to detach his daughter, Mrs. Comyn Menteith, from the extravagant set among whom she had fallen. Bessie was excessively diverting in her accounts of her relations with this scatter-brained step-daughter of hers, and altogether showed in the most flattering manner how much more thoroughly she felt herself belonging to her brother's wife. If she had ever been amazed or annoyed at Alick's choice, she had long ago surmounted the feeling, or put it out of sight, and she judiciously managed to leap over all that had passed since the beginning of the intimacy that had arisen at the station door at Avoncester. It was very flattering, and would have been perfectly delightful, if Rachel had not found herself wearying for Alick, and wondering whether at the end of seven months she should be as contented as Bessie seemed, to know her husband to be in the sitting-room without one sight of him.
At luncheon, however, when Lord Keith appeared, nothing could be prettier than his wife's manner to him--bright, sweet, and with a touch of graceful deference, at which he always smiled and showed himself pleased, but Rachel thought him looking much older than in the autumn--he had little appetite, stooped a good deal, and evidently moved with pain. He would not go out of doors, and Bessie, after following him to the library, and spending a quarter of an hour in ministering to his comfort, took Rachel to sit by a cool dancing fountain in the garden, and began with some solicitude to consult her whether he could be really suffering from sciatica, or, as she had lately begun to suspect, from the effects of a blow from the end of a scaffold-pole that had been run against him when taking her through a crowded street. Rachel spoke of advice.
"What you, Rachel! you who despised allopathy!"
"I have learnt not to despise advice."
And Bessie would not trench on Rachel's experiences.
"There's some old Scotch doctor to whom his faith is given, and that I don't half believe in. If he would see our own Mr. Harvey here it would be quite another thing; but it is of no use telling him that Alick would never have had an available knee but for Mr. Harvey's management. He persists in leaving me to my personal trust in him, but for himself he won't see him at any price! Have you seen Mr. Harvey?"
"I have seen no one."
"Oh, I forgot, you are not arrived yet; but--"
"There's some one," exclaimed Rachel, nervously; and in fact a young man was sauntering towards them. Bessie rose with a sort of annoyance, and "Never mind, my dear, he is quite inoffensive, we'll soon get rid of him." Then, as he greeted her with "Good morning, Lady Keith, I thought I should find you here," she quickly replied,
"If you had been proper behaved and gone to the door, you would have known that I am not at home."
He smiled, and came nearer.
"No, I am not at home, and, what is more, I do not mean to be. My uncle will be here directly," she added, in a fee-faw-fum tone.
"Then it is not true that your brother and his bride are arrived?"
"True in the same sense as that I am at home. There she is, you see- -only you are not to see her on any account," as a bow necessarily passed between him and Rachel. "Now mind you have not been introduced to Mrs. Keith, and if you utter a breath that will bring the profane crowd in shoals upon the Rectory, I shall never forgive you."
"Then I am afraid we must not hope to see you at the bazaar for the idiots."
"No, indeed," Bessie answered, respecting Rachel's gesture of refusal; "no one is to infringe her incog, under penalty of never coming here again."
"You are going?" he added to Bessie; "indeed, that was what brought me here. My sisters sent me to ask whether they may shelter themselves under your matronly protection, for my mother dreads the crush."
"I suppose, as they put my name down, that I must go, but you know I had much rather give the money outright. It is a farce to call a bazaar charity."
"Call it what you will, it is one device for a little sensation."
Rachel's only sensation at that moment was satisfaction at the sudden appearance of Ranger's white head, the sure harbinger of his master and Alick, and she sprang up to meet them in the shrubbery path--all her morbid shyness at the sight of a fresh face passing away when her hand was within Alick's arm. When they came forth upon the lawn, Alick's brow darkened for a moment, and there was a formal exchange of greetings as the guest retreated.
"I am so sorry," began Bessie at once; "I had taken precautions against invasion, but he did not go to the front door. I do so hope Rachel has not been fluttered."
"I thought he was at Rio," said Alick.
"He could not stand the climate, and was sent home about a month ago- -a regular case of bad shilling, I am afraid, poor fellow! I am so sorry he came to startle Rachel, but I swore him over to secrecy. He is not to mention to any living creature that she is nearer than Plinlimmon till the incog, is laid aside! I know how to stand up for bridal privileges, and not to abuse the confidence placed in me."
Any one who was up to the game might have perceived that the sister was trying to attribute all the brother's tone of disapprobation to his anxiety lest his wife should have been startled, while both knew as well as possible that there was a deeper ground of annoyance which was implied in Alick's answer.