"Not to-day."
"But I have half done it already, Sir. It was a great liberty on my part, but I blundered into it."
"Will you give us your company at dinner to-morrow, Mr. Grenfell?"
said Sir Within, without the hesitation of a moment.
Grenfell accepted, and, as Sir Within moved on, turning to Dolly, he said, "Did you remark his agitation--did you notice the embarra.s.sment of his look and manner? Take my word for it, he has made her an offer."
"Do you know it was pa.s.sing through my mind the very same thought; for as they turned the angle of the copse yonder, I saw her s.n.a.t.c.h her hand from him."
"Come back and dine with me. Common delicacy forbids you to spoil a _tete-a-tete_."
"I can"t take the thing as coolly as you do, Grenfell. It"s no laughing matter to me."
"Don"t laugh then, that"s all. There can be no reason, however, that you should not dine; so step in, and let"s be off."
"I suspect you are right," said Dolly, as they drove away. "The old fool has capped his folly. I whispered to him to ask you to dine."
"I heard you, and I marked the eager way he put it off till tomorrow.
His confusion got the better of all his tact, and showed me plainly enough that something had occurred to excite him greatly."
"She pa.s.sed in, too, without ever looking up; she never bowed to us--did you notice that?"
"I saw it all, and I said to myself that Master Dolly"s next dealings with Joel will entail heavy sacrifices."
"It"s not done yet," said Ladarelle, with an affected boldness.
"No, nor need be for some weeks to come; but let us talk no more of it till we have dined. Vyner sent me his cellar-key this morning, and we"ll see if his old wine cannot suggest some good counsel."
CHAPTER x.x.xVIII. SCHEMING
They sat late over their wine, and telling the servants to go to bed, Grenfell ordered that he should not be called before noon on the next day.
According to custom, his serrant had left his letters by his bedside, and then retired noiselessly, and without disturbing him. It was already late in the afternoon when Grenfell awoke. The first note he opened was a short one from Sir Within, begging to excuse himself from the expected happiness of receiving Mr. Grenfell that day at dinner, as a sudden attack of his old enemy the gout had just laid him up in bed. "If I have only my usual fortune," added he, "my seizure will be a brief one, and I may soon again reckon on the pleasure of seeing you here."
The tidings of the illness was corroborated by Grenfell"s valet, who saw the doctor travelling to Dalradern with all the speed of post-horses.
The thought of a courtship that ushered in a fit of the gout was just the sort of drollery that suited Grenfell"s taste, and as he lay he laughed in derision of the old man and his schemes of future happiness.
He fancied himself telling the story at his club, and he dwelt on the opportunity it would afford to talk of "Wardle" as his friend--one whose eccentricities he had therefore a perfect right to dish-up for the amus.e.m.e.nt of all others.
"Take this," said he, giving the note to his servant, "to Mr.
Ladarelle"s room;" and, fancying to himself the varied moods with which that young gentleman would con over the intelligence, he lay back again in his bed.
There was no friendship--there was no reason for any--in the apparent interest he had taken in Ladarelle. It was not of the slightest moment to him which of the two, if either, should marry Kate O"Hara, save as to with whom he should stand best, and be most likely to be well received by in the future. Were she to marry Sir Within, the house would, in all likelihood, be closed to him. The old minister was too well versed in worldly matters not to cut off all the traditions of the past. He"s sure either to introduce her into life under the auspices of some of his own high connexions, or to live totally estranged from all society. "In either case, they are lost to me. Should she be married to Ladarelle, I--as the depositary of all that was secret in the transaction--I must needs have my influence. The house will of necessity be open to me, and I shall make of it what I please." By this last reflection Grenfell summed up what his experience of life had largely supplied him with--that is, an inordinate liking for those establishments in which a large fortune is allied with something which disqualifies the possessors from taking their rightful position in society. In his estimation, there were no such pleasant houses as those where there was a "screw loose,"
either in the conduct, the character, or the antecedents of the owners.
These houses were a sort of asylum for that large nomade population of highly amusing qualities and no characters, the men who had not "done"
everything, but "done" everybody, and of women still more dubious. In these houses the style of living was usually splendid. Wit has a sort of natural affinity for good cookery, and Beauty knows all the value of the "costly setting" which splendour confers. Last of all, there was that perfect liberty--the freedom from all the discipline of correcter establishments--which gave to every guest some prerogative of a master. You came as you liked, went as you liked, and very often, too, introduced whom you liked. What more could a man do if he were the rightful owner? Now, Grenfell was free of many such houses, but in none was he supreme. There was not one wherein his authority was dominant and his word a law. This he ambitioned; he craved impatiently for the time he could say to the men in his club, "I"ll take you down with me to Ladarelle"s--_I_"ll show you some real c.o.c.k shooting--I"ll give you a day or two at Dalradern." Would not that be fame--distinction--triumph?
Ladarelle, too, was a man made by nature for such a part--careless, extravagant, sensual, fond of amus.e.m.e.nt, without caring in the least for the characters of those who contributed towards it, and inherently vain and open to the coa.r.s.est flattery. With him, therefore, Grenfell antic.i.p.ated little trouble; with her he was by no means so sure. She puzzled him, and she seemed determined not to afford him any opportunity of knowing more of her. Her avoidance of him was plain and unmistakable.
"Perhaps she fears, perhaps she distrusts me," thought he. "I"ll take the earliest moment to a.s.sure her she need do neither, but may make me her friend implicitly." He understood a good deal by that same word, which in ordinary life is not imputed to friendship. In fact, by friendship, he--as a great many others do--simply meant conspiracy.
Thinking and reflecting in this vein, he lay, when the door opened, and young Ladarelle, in dressing-gown and slippers, entered.
"What"s the meaning of all this, Grenfell?" said he. "My fellow, Fisk, who is just come over, says that Sir Within is perfectly well; he was in the stable-yard this morning at seven o"clock, and that it is the ward, Mademoiselle herself, is ill."
"He won"t have us at dinner, that"s all I know," said Grenfell, yawning carelessly.
"He says nothing whatever about me; scarcely civil, I think, considering I am supposed to be his guest."
"I"ll give you a dinner. You"ll pay me with interest one of these days, when you come to that estate."
"That I will."
"Do you know, as I lay here this last hour, I have been plotting out the sort of life a man could cut out for himself in a place like this. You are the sort of fellow to have the very pleasantest house in England."
"I should like to try."
"If you try, you"ll win. Shall I tell you, Master Dolly, the quality which first attracted me towards you?"
"What was it?"
"It was this. You are one of the very few young fellows I ever met who was not infected with a slavish worship of the t.i.tled cla.s.ses. How, being a Cambridge man, you escaped it, I don"t know; but you have escaped it."
"You"re right there," said Dolly; but the colour that mounted so suddenly to his cheek, seemed to imply a certain confusion in making the a.s.sertion. "You know we had a peerage once in the family, and it is a hobby of my governor"s to try and revive it. He offered the present people to contest any two of the Opposition seats, and proposed to myself to go into the House; but I told him flatly, I"d rather get into Graham"s than into Parliament."
"A much harder thing to do!"
"You"re in Graham"s, ain"t you?"
"Yes; and so shall you be next ballot, if you really wish for it!"
"What a trump you are! Do you know, Grenfell, I can"t make it out at all that I never met you before?"
"I"m some twelve or fifteen years your senior," said the other, and a slight twitching of the mouth showed a certain irritation as he spoke; "a few years separates men as essentially as a whole hemisphere."
"I suppose so."
"Town life, too, moves in such a routine, that when a man comes to my age, he no more makes a new acquaintance than he acquires a new sensation."
"And, stranger still," continued Dolly, with that persistence that pertains to ill breeding, "I never so much as heard of you."
"I feel ashamed of my obscurity!" said Grenfell, and his pale cheek became mottled with red.
"No, it ain"t that. I meant only to say that I never heard of any Grenfells but the Piccadilly fellows, c.o.x and Grenfells! "None genuine but signed by us." Ha, ha, ha!" and Dolly laughed at his drollery, and the other joined in the mirth quite sufficiently not to attract any especial attention. "Not relatives, I presume?" added Dolly, still laughing.
"Delighted if they were!" said Grenfell, with a sickly smile. "I don"t think the dividends would smell of curry powder!"