"Awfully sad; I say, do you think she"d join the hunt?" Suddenly his eyes lit up, and he started to attention. "We do want some more subscribers jolly badly. If Leonore----"
"Not just at present, my dear,--but, yes, certainly, by-and-by, when she has settled down here, and left off her weeds."
"Her what?" he stared.
"Her widow"s weeds, dear boy. The poor child must wear them, you know.
White collars and cuffs, and that kind of thing. Happily she need not disfigure her sweet face by a frightful cap as _I_ had to do."
"Oh, Lor! Do you mean Leo will have to turn out in a thing like that?"
"My dear, I just said she would _not_."
"But she might, he-he-he!" he chuckled, but the next moment was again preternaturally grave. "I had no idea. Poor Leo!"
This was better. The old lady sighed sympathetically. "Yes, indeed. Poor Leo! You always liked Leo, Val?"
"Rather. I can"t imagine her in a beastly widow"s cap, he-he-he! It"s a beastly shame, but I can"t help laughing."
"It does seem incongruous. I don"t wonder that you can hardly picture that bright little sunbeam of a face with those golden curls hanging round it----"
"She"s not as good-looking as Maud, you know."
"Indeed I think she is a great deal better looking," said Mrs. Purcell, shortly.
But she knew better than to argue the point, and resorted to one more likely to yield a favourable result.
"You were talking about Leonore"s joining the hunt; and I fancy if you are content to wait a little and approach the matter delicately, she is quite likely to be persuaded. Every one knows that it is only stinginess on General Boldero"s part which stands in the way of his daughters"
hunting. _That_ need not affect Leonore, who will now be quite independent, and can keep as many horses as she chooses."
"You don"t say so? Yoicks! I"ll be at her like a shot."
"And you can offer to pilot her, you know. She will be nervous at first."
"Oh, I"ll pilot her. But she can ride all right, for we used to have great larks when they were out on their ponies, and Leo was always the best of the bunch. It will be fun if I can get her to follow hounds, and the hunt will be awfully obliged to me."
"Don"t let any one else--it is your idea, and you ought to have the benefit of it."
"Trust me for that, ma"am," looking very wise. "I"ve never brought them a subscriber yet, and it would be jolly mean of any one to try to cut me out."
"If it is suggested, you must pooh-pooh the notion."
"How can I though, when I"m thinking of it all the time myself?"
"Leonore might be prevailed upon by _you_, by an old friend for whom she has a kindly feeling, and on whose judgment she could rely," replied Mrs. Purcell, softly; "while at the same time she would not think nor dream of such a thing if left to herself. And certainly she would resent being approached on the subject by strangers. Therefore it would be quite correct, absolutely correct, to say that no such approach would have a chance of success. You see that, my dear boy?"
He was further instructed that, in order to prepare the ground for his future mission, he was to take an early opportunity of calling at the Abbey, and of being especially respectful and sympathetic in his manner towards poor dear little Leo.
He was to show that as an old friend and playmate he felt for her; and he might, if he saw his way to it, intimate delicately that though he might grieve on her account at her return to dwell among them, he could not do so on his own.
"Well, I can say that, you know," Val brightened up. He did not much like being on the respectful and sympathetic lay, he told himself; he was pretty sure to make a mess of it there;--but if it came to saying he was glad----
"You can"t _say_ such a thing, my dear, you can only infer it. You can look it; look kind and--and tender."
"And jolly well show old Maud she needn"t book me too sure as her man, eh?"
At last he seemed to have caught up what she was struggling against heavy odds to inculcate. It was up-hill work teaching Val anything, especially anything requiring _finesse_--but occasionally he would startle his mentor. He would emit a flash of intelligence when such was least expected, and there was now such a humorous light in his grey eyes that the old lady laughed in her heart. Dear, dear--how naughty he was!
So he had the vanity to suppose that Maud Boldero reckoned him an admirer?
Whereat Val complacently knew she did.
By degrees he was led to reveal all his artless thoughts upon the subject, and somehow found it more engrossing than he had ever done before.
In truth, his grandmother had never encouraged mention of it before. She had ignored the Boldero girls when she could, and bracketed them together in faint, d.a.m.ning praise when to ignore was impossible. She knew exactly how to treat Val. An incipient flame could be warmed, cooled, or blown out by her breath--and as. .h.i.therto she had had no intention of receiving a daughter-in-law out of Boldero Abbey, she had simply never permitted a spark to be lit.
Here, in justice to the old lady, a solitary fact must be stated. Her grandson was not her heir, and the Claymount estate, of which she had a life rent, was strictly entailed; wherefore Val must be provided for otherwise.
A woman of another sort would have attained this end by saving out of her income, or by insuring her life--but Mrs. Purcell argued that she had so much to keep up, and Valentine"s requirements were so manifold and costly that she could neither put by anything worth having, nor afford the heavy premiums an Insurance Office would demand at her age.
She had not taken the matter into consideration till too late.
And the boy had been bred to no profession--indeed his grandmother secretly doubted his ability to pursue one--and she had been only too glad of the excuse to have him as her companion at Claymount. He had a pittance of his own, derived from his parents who were both dead,--but he had nothing further to look to, as his uncle, who in the course of time would succeed to the estate, openly flouted him for a "loafer," and made no secret of his opinion that the money spent on his hunters and keepers would have been better bestowed upon almost anything else.
What then was to become of Val--Val, who was the apple of her eye, whose very childishness and helplessness were dear to her, whose beauty of face and form--stop, she had it, she laughed as she told herself she had it. And how often she strained those dim old eyes of hers to see more clearly when her darling"s step was heard, and how fondly they rested on the approaching figure and strove to appraise at its exact value the curiously beautiful face, no one but herself knew.
It was a face without a soul--and she was pathetically aware of this, but what then? Val would make a good husband--he would certainly make a good husband. Husbands were not required to be clever; and it was quite on the cards that even an intelligent girl might fall in love with a man who had only a kind heart and an amiable disposition to recommend him, provided his exterior were to her fancy.
But of course the girl must be rich; and now we come to the crux of the whole little scene above narrated--Leonore Stubbs, the wealthy young widow, with no ties, no drawbacks, and not too much discrimination (or she could not have married as she did in the first instance), was the very first person to solve the problem. In her own mind Mrs. Purcell decided that her grandson should call at Boldero Abbey the very first moment that decency permitted.
There is no need to multiply instances, it will now be perceived that in no quarter was the real secret of the unfortunate Leonore"s return to the home of her childhood so much as suspected.
She was a pauper--but she was received as a princess. She had hardly a penny of her own--but she was marked down as a benefactress. She was bereft, denuded, bewildered, humiliated--but she was hailed with acclaim by the shrewdest woman in the neighbourhood on the look-out for an heiress.
CHAPTER IV.
A DULL BREAKFAST-TABLE.
To her surprise, Leonore slept soon and soundly on her first night in the vast, gloomy bedchamber wherein it was her father"s pleasure that she should be installed.
She had not expected to do so.
The room was known as the "Blue Room"; but years had faded the blue, which now only stood out with any clearness in creases of the curtains, or remote patches of carpet on which the light never fell. Otherwise a dull grey prevailed.
Nevertheless Leo had been fond of the "Blue Room" in early days; revelling in its mysterious depths, hiding in its capacious hiding-holes, and, finest fun of all, making hay in its huge four-poster with some little friend of her own age. It was an apartment so seldom used, and its furniture was so shabby and out-of-date, that Sue would readily accede to the little girls" pet.i.tion to be despatched thither--only exacting a promise that there should be no climbing of window-sills, which promise had been broken, and confessed honourably--whereupon Sue, who was herself a woman of honour, never once mentioned window-sills again. The windows, deepset and high up in the wall, with broad sills inviting to perch upon, only existed as roofs for the cupboards beneath, once Leo had succ.u.mbed to temptation and gone unpunished. "No, dear, there is no need for any more punishment," Sue had said in her kindest accents,--and when Sue spoke like that, the little saucy upstart Leonore, whom usually nothing could repress, would be good for days.
Consequently the apartment had its a.s.sociations; and under other circ.u.mstances its new occupant would have found it pleasant enough to look upon it as her own. But weary and dejected, with all the world in shadow around her, it is scarcely to be wondered at that she should shrink into herself, and look piteously up into Sue"s face, as Sue turned the handle of the door.