“But, Horace, we have not settled everything!” protested his sister. “And Ombersley will be disappointed not to see you! hoped you would dine with us!”
“No, I can’t do that,” he replied. “I’m dining at Carlton House. You may give my respects to Ombersley; daresay I shall see him again one of these days!”
He then kissed her in a perfunctory style, bestowed another of his hearty pats upon her shoulder, and took himself off, followed by his nephew. “Just as if I had nothing more to wish for!” Lady Ombersley said indignantly, when Charles came back into the room. “And I have not the least notion when that child is to come to me!”
“It doesn’t signify,” said Charles, with an indifference she found exasperating. “You will give orders for a room to be prepared for her, I suppose, and she may come when she pleases. It’s to be hoped Cecilia likes her, since I imagine she will be obliged to see the most of her.”
“Poor little thing!” sighed Lady Ombersley. “I declare I quite long to mother her, Charles! What a strange, lonely life she must lead!”
“Strange certainly; hardly lonely, if she has been acting hostess for my uncle. I must suppose that she has had some elder lady to live with her — a governess, or some such thing.”
“Indeed, one would think it must have been so, but your uncle distinctly told me that the governess died when they were in Vienna! I do not like to say such a thing of my only brother, but really it seems as though Horace is quite unfit to have the care of a daughter!”
“Extremely unfit,” he said dryly. “I trust you will not have cause to regret your kindness, Mama.”
“Oh, no, I am sure I shall not!” she said. “Your uncle spoke of her in such a way that gave me the greatest desire to welcome her! Poor child, I fear she has not been used to have her wishes or her comfort much considered! I could almost have been angry with Horace when he would keep on telling me that she is a good little thing, and had never been a worry to him! I daresay he has never allowed anyone to be a worry to him, for a more selfish man I believe you could hardly meet! Sophia must have her poor mother’s sweet disposition. I have no doubt of her being a charming companion for Cecilia.”
“I hope so,” said Charles. “And that reminds me, Mama! I have just intercepted another of that puppy’s floral offerings to my sister. This billet was attached to it.”
Lady Ombersley took the proffered missive, and looked at it in dismay. “What shall I do with it?” she asked.
“Put it on the fire,” he recommended.
“Oh, no, I could not, Charles! It might be quite unexceptionable! Besides — why, it might even contain a message from his mother for me!”
“Highly unlikely, but if you think that, you had better read it.”
“Of course, I know it is my duty to do so,” she agreed unhappily.
He looked rather contemptuous, but said nothing, and after a moment’s indecision she broke the seal, and spread open the single sheet. “Oh, dear, it is a poem!” she announced. “I must say, it is very pretty. Listen, Charles!
‘Nymph, when thy mild cerulean gaze
Upon my restless spirit casts its beam — ’”
“I thank you, I have no taste for verse!” interrupted Mr. Rivenhall harshly. “Put it on the fire, ma’am, and tell Cecilia she is not to be receiving letters without your sanction!”
“Yes, but do you think I should burn it, Charles? Only think if this were the only copy of the poem! Perhaps he wants to have it printed!”
“He is not going to print such stuff about any sister of mine!” said Mr. Rivenhall grimly, holding out an imperative hand.
Lady Ombersley, always overborne by a stronger will, was just about to give the paper to him when a trembling voice from the doorway arrested her, “Mama! Do not!”
Chapter 2
LADY OMBERSLEY’S hand dropped; Mr. Rivenhall turned sharply, a frown on his brow. His sister, casting him a look of burning reproach, ran across the room to her mother, and said, “Give it to me, Mama! What right has Charles to burn my letters?”
Lady Ombersley looked helplessly at her son, but he said nothing. Cecilia twitched the open sheet of paper from her mother’s fingers, and clasped it to her palpitating bosom. This did goad Mr. Rivenhall into speech. “For God sake, Cecilia, let us have no play acting!” he said.
“How dared you read my letter?” she retorted.
“I did not read your letter ! I gave it to Mama, and you will scarcely say that she had no right to read it!”
Her soft blue eyes swam with tears; she said in a low voice, “It is all your fault! Mama would never — I hate you, Charles, I hate you!”
He shrugged, and turned away. Lady Ombersley said feebly, “You should not talk so, Cecilia! You know it is quite improper in you to be receiving letters without my knowledge! I do not know what your papa would say if he heard of it.”
“Papa!” exclaimed Cecilia scornfully. “No! It is Charles who delights in making me unhappy!”
He glanced over his shoulder at her. “It would be useless, I collect, to say that my earnest wish is that you should not be made unhappy.”
She returned no answer, but folded her letter with shaking hands, and bestowed it in her bosom, throwing a defiant look at him as she did so. It was met with one of contempt; Mr. Rivenhall propped his shoulders against the mantelshelf, dug his hands into his breeches pockets, and waited sardonically for what she might say next.
She dried her eyes instead, catching her breath on little sobs. She was a very lovely girl, with pale golden locks arranged in ringlets about an exquisitely shaped face, whose delicate complexion was at the moment heightened, not unbecomingly, by an angry flush. In general, her expression was one of sweet pensiveness, but the agitation of the moment had kindled a martial spark in her eyes, and she was gripping her underlip between her teeth in a way that made her look quite vicious. Her brother, cynically observing this, said that she should make a practice of losing her temper, since it improved her, lending animation to a countenance well enough in its way but a trifle insipid.
This unkind remark left Cecilia unmoved. She could hardly fail to know that she was much admired, but she was a very modest girl quite unappreciative of her own beauty, and would much have preferred to have been fashionably dark. She sighed, released her lip, and sat down on a low chair beside her Mama’s sofa, saying in a more moderate tone: “You cannot deny, Charles, that it is your doing that Mama has taken this — this unaccountable dislike to Augustus!”
“Now, there,” said Lady Ombersley earnestly, “you are at fault, dearest, for I do not dislike him at all! Only I cannot think him an eligible husband!”
“I don’t care for that!” declared Cecilia. “He is the only man for whom I could ever feel that degree of attachment which — In short, I beg you will abandon any notion you may have that I could ever entertain Lord Charlbury’s extremely flattering proposal, for I never shall!”
Lady Ombersley uttered a distressful but incoherent protest; Mr. Rivenhall said in his prosaic way, “Yet you were not, I fancy, so much averse from Charlbury’s proposal when it was first told you.”
Cecilia turned her lambent gaze upon him, and answered, “I had not then met Augustus.”
Lady Ombersley appeared to be a good deal struck by the logic of this pronouncement, but her son was less impressionable. He said, “Don’t waste these high flights on me, I beg of you! You have been acquainted with young Fawnhope any time these nineteen years!”
“It was not the same,” said Cecilia simply.
“That,” said Lady Ombersley, in a judicial way, “is perfectly true, Charles. I am sure he was the most ordinary little boy, and when he was up at Oxford he had the most dreadful spots, so that no one would have supposed he would grow into such an excessively handsome young man! But the time he spent in Brussels with Sir Charles Stuart improved him out of all knowledge! I own, I never should have known him for the same man!”