“Why, so I soon shall be, I trust,” Carlyon said, setting down his empty glass and rising to his feet.
“It seems to me you are left with this widow on your hands!”
“Nonsense! Once probate has been granted I dare say she will sell the estate, and I hope she may be able to live very comfortably upon the proceeds.”
“It has been so mismanaged since Eustace came of age that she may find it hard to find a purchaser,” John said pessimistically. “Ten to one, too, there will be so many charges on it that the poor girl will find herself in a worse case than ever. Was he in the moneylenders’hands, do you know?”
“I don’t, but I should think very likely. His debts will have to be paid, of course.”
“Not by you!” John said sharply.
“Well, we shall see how it goes. How long are you staying with us, John?”
“I must be in London tomorrow, but I shall come back, of course, now that things have turned out in this way.”
“You need not.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt you will manage it very well without me!” John said, smiling at him. “But that young rascal will have to give his evidence at the inquest, and naturally I shall not stay away at such a time.”
Carlyon nodded. “As you please. Snuff the candles if you are coming to bed—I told the servants they need not sit up longer.”
“I have a letter I must finish first. Good night, old fellow!”
“Good night.” Carlyon picked up the branch of candles that stood on one of the tables and went to the door.
John had seated himself at the desk again, but he looked round. “I don’t know why I should be surprised at Nicky’s wild ways, after all!” he remarked. “I still have the scars of those shots in my leg!”
Carlyon laughed and went out, closing the door behind him. John stayed looking after him for a moment, a half smile on his lips, then he sighed, shook his head, and turned back to his correspondence.
Mrs. Cheviot slept late into the morning, being, awakened at last by a maidservant who brought her a cup of chocolate arid the information that breakfast would be served in the parlor at the foot of the stairs. She placed a brass can of hot water on the washstand, and after ascertaining that madam required no assistance at her toilet, withdrew again.
Elinor sat up in bed, luxuriously sipping her chocolate and wondering how many of the fantastic events of the previous day had had existence only in her imagination. Her presence in this well-ordered household seemed to indicate that at least some of them had been real. She was unable to refrain from contrasting her present situation with what would have in all probability been her lot in Mrs. Macclesfield’s house, and she would have been more than human had she not enjoyed the very striking difference. She got up presently and looked out of the window. It commanded a view of some formal gardens, just now showing only some snowdrops in flower, and beyond these the outskirts of a park. Lord Carlyon was evidently a man of consequence and fortune, and nothing, she reflected, could be more unlike the squalor of his cousin’s house than the quiet elegance of his own establishment.
She dressed herself in one of her sober-hued round gowns, and putting a Paisley shawl over her shoulders, betook herself downstairs. While she hesitated in the hall, not quite knowing where she should go, the butler came through a door at the back of the house, bowed civilly to her, and ushered her into a snug parlor, where her host and his two brothers were awaiting her before a bright fire.
Carlyon came forward at once to take her hand. “Good morning. I trust you are rested, ma’am?”
“Yes, indeed, thank you. I do not think I can have stirred the whole night through.” She smiled, and bowed to the other two men. “I fear I have kept you waiting.”
“No, no such thing. Will you not be seated? The coffee will be brought in directly.”
She took her place at the table, feeling shy, and glad of the butler’s presence in the room, which made it impossible for the conversation to go beyond the commonplace. While Carlyon exchanged views with John on the probable nature of the weather, she took covert stock of him. He proved, when seen in the light of day, to be quite as personable a man as she had fancied him to be. Without being precisely handsome, his features were good, his carriage easy, and his shoulders, under a well-cut coat of superfine cloth, very broad. He was dressed with neatness and propriety, and although he wore breeches and top boots in preference to the pantaloons and hessians favored by town dwellers, there was no suggestion in his appearance of the slovenly country squire. His brother John was similarly neat; but the high shirt collar affected by Nicky, and his complicated cravat, indicated to Elinor’s experienced eye an incipient dandyism. That Nicky’s attire had been the subject of argument soon became apparent, for at the first opportunity he said in a contumacious tone, “I do not see how I should well wear mourning for Eustace. I mean, when you consider—”
“I did not say you should wear mourning,” interrupted John. “But that waistcoat you have on is the outside of enough!”
“Let me tell you,” said Nicky indignantly, “that this fashion in waistcoats is all the crack up at Oxford!”
“I dare say it may be, but you are not, more shame to you, up at Oxford at this present, and it would be grossly improper for you to be going about the countryside, with our cousin but just dead, in a cherry-striped waistcoat.”
“Ned, do you think so?” Nicky said, turning in appeal to Carlyon.
“Yes, or at any other time,” responded his mentor unfeelingly.
Nicky subsided, with a sotto voce animadversion on old-fashioned prejudice, and applied himself to a formidable plateful of cold roast sirloin. Carlyon signed to the butler to leave the room, and when he had done so, smiled faintly at Elinor and said, “Well, now, Mrs. Cheviot, we have to consider what is next to be done.”
“I do wish you will not call me by that name!” she said.
“I am afraid you will have to accustom yourself to being called by it,” he replied.
She put down the slice of bread and butter she had been in the act of raising to her lips. “My lord, did you indeed marry me to that man?” she demanded.
“Certainly not: I am not in orders. You were married by the vicar of the parish.”
“That is nothing to the purpose! You know very well it was all your doing! But I hoped I might have dreamed it! Oh, dear, what a coil it is! How came I to do such a thing?”
“You did it to oblige me,” he said soothingly.
“I did not. Oblige you, indeed! When you as good as kidnapped me!”
“Kidnapped you?” exclaimed John. “No, no, I am sure he would not do such a thing, ma’am! Ned, you were not so mad?”
“Of course I was not. Accident brought you to Highnoons, Mrs. Cheviot, and if, when you were there, I overpersuaded you a trifle—”
“Well, that is what you say, but from what I have been privileged to see of you, my lord, I should not be surprised to find it had all been a plot to entrap me! I was asked by the servant if I had come in answer to the advertisement. Did you indeed advertise for a wife for your cousin?”
“Yes, I did,” he replied. “In the columns of The Times. You may often see such advertisements.”
She regarded him speechlessly. John said, “It is very true. But I own I do not consider it a respectable thing to do. I was always against it. Heaven knows what kind of female might have arrived at Highnoons! But as it chances, it has all turned out for the best.”
She turned her eyes toward him. They were remarkably fine eyes, particularly so when sparkling with indignation. “It may have turned out for the best as far as you are concerned, sir,” she said, “but what about the abominable situation in which I now find myself? I do not know how I am any longer to possess any degree of credit with the world!”
“Have no fears on that score!” Carlyon said. “I have already set it about that your betrothal to my cousin was of a long-standing, though secret, nature.”