第35章

The pity of it! The pity of it! It was thus that Lady Cantrip looked at it. From what the girl's father had said to her she was disposed to believe that the malady had gone deep with her. 'All things go deep with her,' he had said. And she too from other sources had heard something of this girl. She was afraid that it would go deep. It was a thousand pities! Then she asked herself whether the marriage ought to be regarded as impossible. The Duke had been very positive,--had declared again and again that it was quite impossible, had so expressed himself as to make her aware that he intended her to understand that he would not yield whatever the sufferings of the girl might be. But Lady Cantrip knew the world well and was aware that in such matters daughters are apt to be stronger than their fathers. He had declared Tregear to be a young man with very small means, and intent on such pleasures as require great means for their enjoyment. No worse character could be given to a gentleman who had proposed himself as a son-in-law. But Lady Cantrip thought it possible that the Duke might be mistaken in this. She had never seen Mr Tregear, but she fancied that she had heard his name, and that the name was connected with a character different from that which the Duke had given him.

Lady Cantrip, who at this time was a young-looking woman, not much above forty, had two daughters, both of whom were married. The younger about a year since had become the wife of Lord Nidderdale, a middle-aged young man who had been long about town, a cousin of the late Duchess, the heir to a marquisate, and a Member of Parliament. The marriage had not been considered very brilliant; but the husband was himself good-natured and pleasant, and Lady Cantrip was fond of him. In the first place she went to him for information.

'Oh yes, I know him. He's one of our set at the Beargarden.'

'Not your set now, I hope,' she said laughing.

'Well;--I don't see so much of them as I used to. Tregear is not a bad fellow at all. He's always with Silverbridge. When Silverbridge does what Tregear tells him, he goes along pretty straight. But unfortunately there's another man called Tifto, and when Tifto is in the ascendant then Silverbridge is apt to go a little astray.'

'He's not in debt, then?'

'Who?-Tregear? I should think he's the last man in the world to owe a penny to anyone.'

'Is he a betting man?'

'Oh dear no; quite the other way up. He's a severe, sarcastic, bookish sort of fellow,--a chap who knows everything and turns up his nose at people who know nothing.'

'Has he got anything of his own?'

'Not much I should say. If he had had any money he would have married Lady Mab Grex last year.'

Lady Cantrip was inclined from what she now learned to think that the Duke must be wrong about the young man. But before Lady Mary joined her she made further inquiry. She too knew Lady Mabel, and knowing Lady Mabel, she knew Miss Cassewary. She contrived to find herself alone with Miss Cassewary, and asked some further questions about Mr Tregear. 'He's a cousin of my Lord's,' said Miss Cass.

'So I thought. I wonder what sort of young man he is. He is a good deal with Lord Silverbridge.'

Then Miss Cassewary spoke her opinion very plainly. 'If Lord Silverbridge has nobody worse about him than Mr Tregear he would not come to much harm.'

'I suppose he's not very well off?'

'No;--certainly not. He will have a property of some kind, I believe, when his mother dies. I think very well of Mr Tregear;--only I wish that he had a profession. But why are you asking about him, Lady Cantrip?'

'Nidderdale was talking to me about him and saying that he was so much with Lord Silverbridge. Lord Silverbridge is going into Parliament now, and, as it were, beginning the world, and it would be a thousand pities that he should get into bad hands.' It may, however, be doubted whether Miss Cassewary was hoodwinked by this little story.

Early in the second week of May the Duke brought his daughter up to The Horns, and at the same time expressed his intention of remaining in London. When he did so Lady Mary at once asked whether she might not be with him, but he would not permit it. The house in London would, he said, be more gloomy even than Matching.

'I am quite ashamed of giving so much trouble,' Lady Mary said to her new friend.

'We are delighted to have you, my dear.'

'But I know you have been obliged to leave London because I am with you.'

'There is nothing I like so much as this place, which your father has been kind enough to lend us. As for London, there is nothing now to make me like being there. Both my girls are married, and therefore I regard myself as an old woman who has done her work.

Don't you think this place very much nicer than London at this time of the year?'

'I don't know London at all. I had only just been brought out when poor mamma want abroad.'

The life they led was very quiet, and most probably have been felt to be dull by Lady Cantrip, in spite of her old age and desire for retirement. But the place itself was very lovely. May of all the months of the year is in England the most insidious, the most dangerous, and the most inclement. A greatcoat can not be endured, and without a greatcoat who can endure a May wind and live? But of all months it is the prettiest. The grasses are then the greenest, and the young foliage of the trees, while it has all the glory and all the colour of spring vegetation, does not hide the form of the branches as do the heavy masses of the larger leaves which come in the advancing summer. And of all the villas near London The Horns was the sweetest. The broad green lawn swept down to the very margins of the Thames, which absolutely washed the fringe of grass when the tide was high. And here, along the bank, was a row of flowering ashes the drooping boughs of which in places touched the water. It was one of those spots which when they are first seen make the beholder feel that to be able to live there and look at it always would be happiness for life.