Chapter V: Diana's Story

"I am afraid that is the signal for retiring," says Colonel Fane, as we see Mrs. Warrington make a move. "You will be going to bed now."

"Yes," I answer, looking at the clock. "It is very late,--ten minutes past eleven."

"Pray" (smiling), "what time do you go to bed at home?"

"Oh, generally between half-past nine and ten."

"Really! You must get a good deal of beauty sleep. I have heard it is only to be obtained before twelve o'clock. Do you know that saying?"

"Yes. Nurse always tells it me when I am late."

"Oh! you have a nurse, have you?" (looking amused). "By the way, though, so had Juliet."

"And I am older than Juliet by three years," I add, slyly. "Must not I be a baby to want a nurse at my age?"

"And yet," he says, musingly, replying to the first part of my sentence, "I fancy Juliet must have been very much more of a woman than you are."

I feel slightly offended. It is rather ignominious to be thought young. I rise to wish him good-night.

"Good-night," he says, holding my hand rather longer than necessary.

The next day it pours in torrents. There is a meet three miles off, and most of the party had intended hunting. A few adventurous spirits appear in pink, but after they have stood a few minutes at the window, dismally contemplating the project, having each and every of them tapped the glass, and looked out at the hall-door, to observe the weather from a fresh point of view, they for the most part make up their minds that it is hopeless, and fifty to one against the hounds meeting.

"Shall I go, or stay?" whispers Colonel Fane, who has found his way to my side at the breakfast-table.

"You will get very wet if you go," I reply, demurely.

At this moment Lady Gwyneth enters, fully equipped.

"You don't mean to say you are going, Lady Gwyneth!" cry half a dozen voices, in various accents of surprise.

"Isn't everybody going?" she asks, coolly taking her seat.

"Look at the weather!" "The hounds won't meet!" "What's the use of getting wet through?" say voices, again.

"Oh, if you are afraid of a little rain, no doubt you are all better at home," she retorts, contemptuously.

"I'll go if you do, Lady Gwyneth," cries Curly, flushing up, and looking very eager.

"Oh, Curly!" I utter, involuntarily.

"Bravo!--so you shall," she answers, taking no notice of me. "And you shall ride Mr. Desborough's mare. I think" (contemptuously) "I can answer for his not being of the party."

Her husband looks up, not very well pleased, but too much afraid of her to offer any but the mildest opposition.

"I am sure the earl, your father--" he begins.

"Pray leave the earl, my father, out of the question" (looking daggers at him). "I am not always bringing up your father, the--dear me, I am afraid I was going to say the draper!" (with a short and very unpleasant laugh). "'Mais nous avons changé tout cela.'"

I do not think any one present thinks any the more of Lady Gwyneth for this outrageous speech; indeed, I fancy she is rather ashamed of it herself, for she says, hastily,--

"Come, Mr. Warrington, the weather won't keep you, I know. If the hounds don't meet, we can turn tail and come back: at all events, we shall have had a ride. I never take off my habit when I have once put it on."

"All right, Lady Gwyn!" cries the jolly voice of our host, "I'm your man.

"'If you will, you will, we may depend on 't,'

I suppose. How soon shall I order the horses?"

"Curly," I say, in a small voice, my anxiety overcoming my shyness, "if Mr. Warrington is going, there is no necessity for you to go. You know you have rather a cough."

"Oh, yes, stop at home, and put your feet in mustard-and-water, and let your sister give you gruel," sneers Lady Gwyneth; and, I think for the first time in his life, my brother darts an angry glance at me.

"Pray mind your own business, Di," he says, crossly.

At this moment I hate Lady Gwyneth.

"My dear fellow," interposes Colonel Fane, quietly, "you ought to be tremendously obliged to your sister for being so anxious about you. You see" (with a little flash in his eyes), "it is a matter of utter indifference to Lady Gwyneth whether you lay in consumption or a cough for the winter, as long as you do her bidding when she wants you."

"Thank you, Colonel Fane," says Lady Gwyneth, coloring a little. "You give me a charming character."

"I shall be delighted if you prove that it is undeserved," he answers, with a little smile.

"No one shall accuse me of helping to make a milksop of a boy," she replies, defiantly. "Come, Mr. Carew, are you ready?"

Curly jumps up with flattered alacrity, and I feel discomfited.

"Never mind," says Colonel Fane, encouragingly, "I dare say he has had many a good wetting before now; and I cannot say he looks at all delicate."

"Oh, no!" I answer, hastily, "not a bit! But one hears such stories, you know; and papa and I are frightened to death if he ails the least thing."

"What a devoted family you seem!"

"Yes," I answer, simply; "we all think there is no one like each other."

The sentence is not a very well-turned one, but it expresses my meaning, and he seems to understand it.

"Have you any brothers and sisters?" I ask.

"One sister. The only relation--the only near one, at least--I have in the world. She is coming to-day."

"I am very glad," I say, taking it as a matter of course that I shall like her. "Is she like you?"

"Why?--would you wish her to be?" (a little curiously).

"Yes," I say, frankly, for somehow I do not feel at all shy with him.

"No," he says, with a sigh, "she is not much like me, or rather I am not much like her. I wish I were. She is, I verily believe, the best woman in the world."

"Then I suppose she is not very young or pretty." I remark, with a _naïveté_ of which I am unconscious for the moment.

"Don't the two go together?" he asks, smiling; then, looking earnestly at me, "I am sure they do sometimes."

I blush, and am furiously angry with myself for doing so. Of course it looks as though I take his speech to myself; and how on earth can he know whether I am good or not? I, alas! know how far short I fall of meriting that desirable adjective.

"She is not what you would call young," Colonel Fane proceeds. "I believe" (with a smile) "young girls think every member of their own sex over five-and-twenty uninterestingly old; and she is thirty; but pretty she certainly is, if I am to believe the world's unanimous verdict."

"I hope she will like me," I say, diffidently, "for I have not spoken two words to any lady but Mrs. Warrington since I entered the house."

"Well," he says, smiling, "Miss Gore must be excused for being preoccupied; and as for Lady Gwyneth and Mrs. Huntingdon, they never think of speaking to one of their own sex as long as there is a man present."

There is a general move.

"Can you play billiards?" he asks me.

I answer in the affirmative, being tolerably proficient from constant practice.

"Then come into the billiard-room."

I shake my head.

"I had rather not."

"Why? Mrs. Huntingdon will keep you in countenance. She always goes into the billiard-room after breakfast."

"Does she play?"

"No; but, as she says, she loathes doing needle-work with a parcel of women in a boudoir. She never does anything, as far as I know, but recline, magnificently dressed, in a lounging-chair, with her hands in her lap, covered with diamonds--and--flirt," he adds.

I suppose I look rather surprised, for he says, quickly,--

"No doubt you think it rather strange for a married woman to flirt, and it slipped out unawares" (looking rather vexed with himself); "only you cannot very well be in the house very long with her and not find it out."

"But her husband?" I say, opening my eyes: "does he not mind?"

"Not in the least, I think. I am not sure he is even aware of it."

"How dreadful!" I ejaculate, in so serious a voice that he laughs.

"Come," he says, "let us go into the billiard-room. How many will you give me?"

The morning passes away very quickly and pleasantly. After billiards we take to battledore and shuttlecock,--a game provocative of much laughter when one is not very proficient, as neither Colonel Fane nor I are. Mrs. Huntingdon perfectly carries out the programme allotted to her.

"Di," says my brother through the keyhole, as I am arranging my ruffled locks before luncheon,--"Di, open the door."

I comply, and, the door being opened, he gives me a hearty embrace.

"I'm awfully sorry I spoke so crossly to you this morning, dear old Di!"

"I don't think you ever said a harsh word hardly to me in your life before," I reply, the tears starting to my eyes; "and to think she should be the cause!"

I suppose there is a ring of the contempt I feel in my voice, for he says, quickly,--

"Don't abuse her, Di. She's an awfully kind, jolly little woman, and she has asked me over there to stay; and, by jingo! can't she just ride!"

My face falls,--I don't know why; but, independently of losing his society, I hate the thought of his going to her. I feel a desire to disparage her that I never felt for any one before; but then I have hardly ever seen any of my own sex but the rector's wife and daughters, and the doctor's sister.

"I suppose you think everything she does nice?" I say. "I suppose" (raising my voice a little) "you think it was nice of her to say what she did to her husband at breakfast?"

"No, I don't; but you have no idea" (earnestly) "what a miserable life hers is. He is such a sickening little cad!"

My lip curls in scorn. My opinion of Lady Gwyneth is in no way heightened by the thought that she has been confiding her troubles to a boy of sixteen, whose acquaintance she has not had twenty-four hours.

"Never mind," I say, kissing him, as the gong sounds. "At all events, never let her make you unkind to me, dear." And we proceed down-stairs together amicably.

Whilst we are sitting at lunch, the clouds break, the sun comes out in all his glory, and every one begins to make plans for spending the afternoon out of doors. Mrs. Warrington invites Mrs. Huntingdon to drive with her in the barouche, and that lady accedes. Then our hostess, turning to me, kindly asks me to be of the party. I do not want to go in the least, but, not knowing how to excuse myself, thank her, and accept.

"Quite wrong, Miss Carew," says Colonel Fane, who is again next to me: "it would do you ten times more good to go for a good walk."

"I like walking," I answer, eagerly.

"So do I. Let us make up a party: may we, Mrs. Warrington? Who is for a walk?"

"We are," cries Miss Gore. Then, correcting herself, with a blush,--"At least, I am."

"And I," says her soldier, tenderly.

No one else volunteers. Mr. Warrington is going to drive Lady Gwyneth and two or three of the men on his coach, since it is too wet to shoot.

"You will come too, Curly?" says Lady Gwyneth; and for the world I cannot help an angry flash coming into my eyes at this increase of intimacy.

Half an hour later we four are starting for our walk. The air is delicious, the sun as bright and hot as it can be in January; such birds as there are are singing, whistling, twittering; the bright rain-drops stand on every leaf and twig, like unset diamonds; little rivulets of rain run and sparkle;

"From the green rivage, many a fall
Of diamond rillets musical"

work on their way to the brook below. It is such a day as one sometimes gets in midwinter, giving one a heavenly foretaste of the spring.

"How glad I am you thought of a walk!" I say, joyously. "I hate driving,--or, rather, being driven. But I wish we had some dogs to take; that is half the fun of a walk."

"We had better get ahead of the other couple," he whispers.

"Why?"

"Why, because," he answers, laughing, "we should make a point of following them religiously, which they would think a great nuisance; and I don't suppose they will have the same scruples with regard to us."

"I see; but really I do not know why lovers should require to be left alone in such a public thing as a walk."

"My dear fellow," cries Colonel Fane, as, stepping out briskly, we pass them, "what a snail's pace you are going! Miss Carew and I cannot curb our impatient feet, so we will show you the way."

And on we go, nor ever cast a glance behind for a couple of miles, when Colonel Fane looks over his shoulder, and says, with a laugh,--

"I thought as much. Miss Gore and her soldier are nowhere in sight."

I feel as if I had known my companion all my life, and talk away to him about my father, Curly, home, and most things that concern us; and he listens as if I were telling him the most amusing, interesting stories in the world.

"Dear me," I say, with sudden compunction, as after a walk of about an hour and a half we are drawing homewards again, "how I must have been boring you all this time! I am nearly as bad as Mr. Desborough, only in a different line."

"You cannot think how interested I have been," he answers, eagerly. "I quite long to see you at home. I wonder if your father would consider it a liberty if I were to call upon him?"

"Oh no," I begin, quickly, and then pause, remembering Papa's aversion for any society.

"I shall ride over one day," he says, not remarking my hesitation: "you know I live only eleven miles from you, and my father and your grandfather used to know each other very well. After all you have told me, I should like immensely to see Mr. Carew. I wish he were here!"

"So do I," I respond, with a big sigh. "I do miss him so. I did not want to come at all, but he insisted upon it."

"Quite right, too," says Colonel Fane, approvingly: "you ought to leave him sometimes, to get him accustomed to it against the time when you leave him altogether."

"You mean when I get married?" I say, not pretending to misunderstand him.

"Exactly" (smiling).

"But," I return, triumphantly, "I shall not get married! I never see a man."

"Thank you" (taking off his hat).

"This is the first time I have ever been out, and I do not suppose I shall ever go anywhere again, unless Mrs. Warrington invites me next year, if I behave properly this time."

"Then you don't look forward to getting married, as most girls do."

"No" (shaking my head), "not at all."

"Have you never" (very earnestly) "thought it would be pleasant to have some one to love and care for you intensely, in a different way from a father or mother?"

"Yes," I answer, reluctantly, blushing a little, "I have. I have been desperately in love, too, with men in books; but" (smiling), "after those heroes, I do not think I should find an ordinary man to come up to my expectations. One would have to be so very fond of a man to marry him, would not one?" (looking up earnestly at him).

"_Vide_ Lady Gwyneth and Mrs. Huntingdon," he says, laughing, but as quickly becoming grave again.

"God forbid that you should ever marry except for love!" he adds, locking at me very kindly.