Chapter X: For Whom the Jewels Were Intended

Clare was seated in a shady corner of the library, looking alternately at the German map in Murray's Guide and the diamond ring which she had first received from Trevor Chute on the eventful moonlight night at Carnaby Court.

How strange that it should be on her finger again after all!

'And to think,' she muttered, 'that papa should so unkindly and, with bad taste have stung his tender and loving heart by speaking to _him_ of me and that big butterfly soldier, Desmond! No wonder it is that Trevor seemed cold, constrained, and strange. Oh, my love, what must you have thought of me!'

And the girl, as she uttered this aloud, pressed the ring to her lips, while her eyes filled with tears. Then she sank into one of her reveries, from which, after a time, she was roused by the entrance of her father. He was attired for a ride in the Row, had his whip in his hand, and was buttoning his faultlessly fitting gloves on his thin white aristocratic hands with the care that he usually exhibited; but Clare could perceive that his face wore an undoubtedly cloudy expression.

'Papa, for whom were those lovely jewels that came here for inspection yesterday?' she asked.

'Not for you, Miss Collingwood.'

'Yet they were sent here.'

'A mistake of the shop-people.'

Clare looked up with surprise in her sweet face, for his manner, though studiously polite in tone, was curt and strange.

'Perhaps they were for Ida?' said Clare, gently.

'No.'--'Violet, then?'

'No.'--'For whom, then, papa?'

'The sister of him you rejected yesterday.'

'Evelyn Desmond!'

'Yes, Miss Collingwood; and thereby hangs a tale,' replied Sir Carnaby, giving a final touch to his stock in a mirror opposite. 'Did any silly fancy for this man who has just returned to India--this Captain Chute--influence you in this matter?'

Clare coloured painfully, but said 'No.'

'Glad to hear it, Clare, as I thought all that stuff was forgotten long ago,' he continued, with the nearest approach to a frown that was ever seen on his usually impassible visage.

'You asked him to dine at your club, papa,' said Clare, evasively.

'Yes, out of mere politeness, to thank him, as Beverley's friend, for visiting Ida, though I fear the visit may make her grief a greater bore than ever. But why did you decline an alliance that would be so advantageous as that with Desmond?'

'Simply because I cannot love him, and I don't wish to leave you, dearest papa; now that you are getting old.'

'Old!' He was frowning in earnest now.

'Pardon me, papa, I love no man sufficiently to make me leave your roof for his.'

'What stuff and nonsense is this, Clare Collingwood!'

'It is neither, but truth, papa.'

'Though you have the bad taste to inform me that I am getting old, permit me to remind you that in many things you, Clare, are a mere child, though a woman in years.'

'A child, perhaps, compared with such women as Desmond's sister Evelyn,' replied Clare, with some annoyance.

'And as a woman in years, I, foreseeing the time when I could not have you always to reign over my table at Carnaby Court or in Piccadilly, have deemed it necessary to provide myself with a--a----'

'Papa!'

'Well, a substitute,' he added, giving a finishing adjust to his gloves, and then looking Clare steadily in the face.

'In the person of Evelyn Desmond!' she exclaimed, in a breathless voice, and becoming very pale.

'Precisely, my dear Miss Collingwood. She has promised to fill up in my heart all the fearful void left there by the loss of your good mother. I meant to have told you this long ago, but--but it was an awkward subject to approach.'

'So I should think!'

'With one who comports herself like you; and--ah--in fact, now that we are about it, I may mention that the marriage has been postponed only in consequence of Beverley's death, Ida's mourning, illness, and all that sort of thing.'

'So my sacrifice in declining poor Trevor Chute, after all his faith, love, and cruel treatment, was uncalled for,' thought Clare, as she stood like a marble statue, with scorn growing on her lovely lip, while endeavouring to realize the startling tidings now given to her.

'Is _this_ to be the end of Evelyn's endless manoeuvring and countless flirtations?' she exclaimed after a pause.

'Miss Collingwood, I spoke of Miss Desmond,' said he.

'So did I,' replied Clare, with growing anger.

'Don't be so impulsive--rude, I should say--it is bad form, bad style, very.'

'Poor mamma!' sighed Clare; 'she was a good and true gentlewoman.'

'That I grant you, but a trifle cold and stately.'

'When she died I thought it is only when angels leave us that we see the light of heaven on their wings.'

'Now don't be melodramatic; it is absurd, and to be emotional is bad taste. As one cuckoo does not make a spring any more than one swallow a summer, so no more should one affair of the human heart make up the end of a human existence.'

'Are you really in earnest about this, papa?'

'Of course, though I am not much in earnest about anything usually; it is not worth one's while.'

'At a certain age, perhaps,' thought Clare; 'but you were earnest enough once, in dismissing poor Trevor Chute.'

'You will break this matter to your sisters,' said he, preparing to leave her.

'My sisters!' said Clare, bitterly and sadly. 'Oh, papa! think of Violet's prospects with--with' (she feared to add such a chaperon)--'and of Ida, so sad, so delicate in health.'

'Nonsense, Miss Collingwood, Ida will soon marry again; such absurd grief never lasts; and I am sure that Vane loves her still.'

'Then _he_ is not supposed to have got over "that stuff," as you think Trevor Chute and I have done.'

'Miss Collingwood, I do not like my words repeated; so with your permission we shall cease the subject, and I shall bid you good-morning.'

Whenever he was offended with any of his own family the tone he adopted was one of elaborate politeness; and twiddling his eyeglass, with a kind of Dundreary skip, this model father, this 'awful dad' of Clare, departed to the abode of his inamorata.

Clare remained for some time standing where he had left her as if turned to stone. The proud and sensitive girl's cheek burned with mingled shame and anger as she thought of the ridicule, the perhaps coarse gibes of the clubs, and general irony of society, which such an alliance was apt to excite; and with all the usual command of every emotion peculiar to her set and style, as this conviction came upon her, tears hot and swift rushed into her sweet dark eyes.

Could Sir Carnaby have been so insane as to contemplate a double alliance with that fast family? she asked of herself.

'It would have made us all more than ever ridiculous!' she muttered aloud; and then she thought with more pleasure of her re-engagement with Trevor Chute, the promise given, and which she would certainly redeem; yet she fairly wept for the price of its redemption, as she shrank with a species of horror from seeing that 'Parky party,' as she knew the men about town called the fair Evelyn, occupying the place of her dead mother at home and abroad, and presented at Court and elsewhere in the Collingwood jewels.

Vanity, perhaps, as much as anything else, was the cause of this new idea in the mind of the shallow Sir Carnaby. Though he felt perfectly conscious that his own day was past, he would not acknowledge it. He knew well, too, that though many enjoyed his dinners and wines, his crushes in Piccadilly, and his cover-shooting at Carnaby Court, and that many tolerated him for the sake of his rank, position, and charming daughters, they deemed him 'no end of an old bore,' and this conviction galled and cut him to the quick.

Hence, if Evelyn Desmond became his wife, the fact would be a kind of protest against _Time_ itself!

'How society will laugh! it is intolerable!' exclaimed Ida, thoroughly rousing herself when she heard the startling tidings. 'You, Clare, were ever his favourite--the one who, as he said always, reminded him most of poor mamma 'when she last folded her pale, thin hands so meekly, and after kissing us all, gave up her soul to God; yet he could tell you, in this jaunty way, that another was to take her place, and that other was such a woman as Evelyn Desmond!'

Already the rumour of 'the coming event' must, they thought, be known in town, else wherefore the hint thrown out so vaguely by Trevor Chute? Already! The mortification of the girls was unspeakable.

Had the unwelcome announcement been made to her but a day sooner, at least before her chance interview with Trevor--that interview so full of deep and tender interest to them both--she might have been tempted to make a promise more distinct than she had given, for Clare's gentle heart was full of indignation now.

Trevor Chute could not now make, as in the past time, such settlements as her father's ambition required and deemed necessary; yet his means were ample, and she had lands, riches, and position enough for both; so why should she not be his wife?

Such are the idiosyncrasies of human nature, that her father, who once liked Trevor Chute, now disliked, and more than disliked him, because he felt quite sensible that he had done the frank but unfortunate soldier who had loved his daughter a wrong.

To stay in town with this engagement on the _tapis_, and this marriage in prospect, was more, however, than Clare cared to endure, or Ida either. When it was pressed upon the baronet that the three sisters should go to Carnaby Court or elsewhere, he affected much surprise, as they had barely reached the middle of the season, and the engagement list contained many affairs towards which Clare, and certainly Violet, had looked forward with interest.

Though he made a show of some opposition to all this, Sir Carnaby was not unwilling to be left in town alone at this time, where he had to be in frequent attendance upon his intended, where there were settlements to arrange, a _trousseau_ to prepare, and jewels to select, so the plan of Clare and Ida was at once adopted.