and on the whole treating it rather harshly, Laura’s eyes flashing the while with vexation.
“I like croquet for some things,” said Laura’s partner, the thin curate, after vainly trying to render her a service; “I but it’s a very unchristian-like sort of game – one seems to give all one’s love to one’s friends, and to keep none for one’s enemies.”
“O, come, I say,” laughed Charley, who seemed to be in high spirits. “Here’s Mr Louther talking about love to Miss Bray!”
“Indeed, I assure you – ” exclaimed the curate.
“But I distinctly heard the word,” laughed Charley.
“Was that meant for a witticism?” sneered Laura.
“Wit? no!” said Charley good-humouredly. “I never go in for that sort of thing.”
“Bai Jove, Vining! why don’t you attend to the ga-a-a-me?” drawled Max, who was suffering from too much of the second Miss Lingon – a young lady who looked upon him as an Adonis.
“Not my turn,” said Charley.
“Yes, yes!” said Hugh Lingon innocently. “Miss Bedford wants you to help her along!”
“Of course,” sneered Laura. “Such impudence!”
But Charley did not hear her words; for he was already half-way towards poor Ella, who seemed to shrink from him as he approached, and watched with a troubled breast the efforts he made upon her behalf.
“Now it’s my turn again,” said Hugh. “Now just give me your advice here, Vining. What ought I to do?”
Charley interrupted a remark he was making to Ella Bedford, and pointed out the most advantageous play, when Hugh Lingon raised his mallet, the blow fell, and – he missed.
“Now, did you ever see anything like that?” he exclaimed, appealing to the company.
“Yes, often!” laughed Charley.
“But what can be the reason?” exclaimed Lingon.
“Why, bai Jove! it’s because you’re such a muff, Lingon, bai Jove!” exclaimed Max.
“I am – I know I am!” said Lingon good-humouredly. “But, you know, I can’t help it – can’t indeed!”
The game went on with varying interest, Charley in the intervals trying to engage Ella in conversation; but only to find her retiring, almost distant, as from time to time she caught sight of a pair of fierce eyes bent upon her from beneath Laura’s frowning brows. But there was a sweetness of disposition beaming from Ella’s troubled countenance, and the tokens of a rare intellect in her few words – spoken to endeavour to direct him to seek for others with more conversational power, but with precisely the contrary effect – that seemed to rouse in Sir Philip Vining’s son feelings altogether new. He found himself dwelling upon every word, every sweet and musical tone, drinking in each troubled, trembling look, and listening with ill-concealed eagerness even for the words spoken to others.
“Bai Jove!” exclaimed Max at length, angrily to his sister, “what’s the matter with that Charley Vining?”
“Don’t ask me!” cried Laura pettishly, as she turned from him to listen to and then to snub the slim curate, who, after ten minutes’ consideration, had worked up and delivered a compliment.
Once only did Ella trust herself to look at Charley, taking in, though, with that glance the open-countenanced, happy English face of the young man, but shrinking within herself the next instant as she seemed to feel the bold, open, but still respectfully-admiring glance directed at her.
Two other croquet sets had been made upon the great lawn; and, taking the first opportunity, Ella had given up her mallet into other hands – an act, to Laura’s great disgust, imitated by Charley Vining, who, however, found no opportunity for again approaching Ella Bedford until the hour of dinner was announced, when, the major portion of the croquet-players having departed, the remainder – the invited few – met in the drawing-room.
Volume One – Chapter Twelve.
Cross Upon Cross
“Will you take down Miss Bedford, Max?” said Mrs Bray, according to instructions from her son, who, however, was not present, his toilet having detained him; and, therefore, trembling Ella fell to the lot of Charley Vining, whom, she knew not why, she seemed to fear now as much as she did Max Bray.
And yet she could not but own that he was only frank, cordial, and gentlemanly. Only! Was that all? She dared not answer that question. Neither could he answer sundry questions put by his own conscience, as from time to time he encountered angry, reproachful glances from the woman who sat opposite, but to whom, whatever might have been assumed, he had never uttered a word that could be construed into one of love.
Somehow or another, during that dinner, Sir Philip’s words would keep repeating themselves to Charley, and at last he found himself muttering: “Shut myself out from an Eden – from an Eden!” while, when the ladies rose, and the door had closed upon the last rustling silk, a cloud appeared to have come over the scene, and he sat listening impatiently to the drawl of Max, and the agricultural converse of Mr Bray.
It was with alacrity, then, that Charley left the table, when, upon reaching the drawing-room, he found Laura hovering in a paradise of musical R’s, as she sat at the piano, rolling them out in an Italian bravura song, whose pages, for fear that he should be forestalled by Charley Vining, Hugh Lingon rushed to turn over.
“Now Miss Bedford will sing us something,” shrieked Mrs Bray; and not daring to decline, Ella rose and walked to the piano, taking up a song from the canterbury. But her hands trembled as a shadow seemed to be cast upon her; and without daring to look, she knew that Charley Vining was at her side, ready to turn over the leaves.
“If he would only go!” she thought; and then she commenced with tremulous voice a sweet and plaintive ballad, breathing of home and the past, when, living as it were in the sweet strain, her voice increased in volume and pathos, the almost wild expression thrilling through her hearers, till towards the end of the last verse, when forgetting even Vining’s presence in the recollections evoked, Ella was brought back to the present with a start, as one single hot tear-drop fell upon her outstretched hand.
How she finished that song she never knew, nor yet how she concealed her painful agitation; but her next recollection was of being in the conservatory with Charley Vining, alone, and with his deep-toned voice seeming to breathe only for her ear.
“You must think it weak and childish,” he said softly; “but I could not help it,” he added simply. “Perhaps I am, after all, only an overgrown boy; but that was my dear mother’s favourite song – one which I have often listened to; and as you sung to-night, the old past seemed to come back almost painfully. But I need not fear that you will ridicule me.”
“Indeed, no!” said Ella softly. “I can only regret that I gave you pain.”
“Pain! No, it was not pain,” said Charley musingly. “I cannot explain the feeling. I am a great believer in the power of music; and had we been alone, I might have asked you to repeat the strain. I am only too glad, though, that my poor father was not here.”
There was a pause for quite a minute – one which, finding how her companion had been moved, Ella almost feared to break; when seeing him start back, as
