leave off calling yourself a stranger. You too are English; can you not feel yourself so?”
“Yes, I am an Englishman,” said Alvar. “See, if I stay here, I have money and honour. My father speaks to me of a ‘position in the county.’ That is to be a great man as I understand it. Nor are there parties here to throw down one person, and then another. In Spain, though not less noble, we are poor, and all things change quickly, and I shall not stay always here in Oakby. I am going to London, and I see that I can make for myself a life that pleases me.”
“Yet you love Spain best?”
“I love Spain,” said Alvar, “the sunshine and the country; but I am no Spaniard. No, I stayed away from England because it was my belief that my father did not love me. I was wrong. I have a right to be here; it was my right to come here long ago, and my right I will not give up!”
He drew himself up with an indescribable air of hauteur for a moment, then with sudden softness, —
“And who was it that saw that right and longed for me to come, who opened his heart to me? It was Cheriton, my brother. He has explained much to me, and says if I learn to love England it will make him happy. And I will love it for his sake.”
“I hope so; soon you will not find it so dull.”
“Nay, it is not now so dull. Have I not the happiness of your sympathy? Could I be dull to-day?” said Alvar, with his winning grace.
Virginia blushed, and her great eyes drooped, unready with a reply.
“And there is your cousin,” she said, shyly; “he is a companion; don’t you think him like Cheriton?”
“Yes, a little; but Cheriton is like an angel, though he will not have me say so; but Rupert, he has the devil in his face. But I like him – he is a nice fellow – very nice,” said Alvar, the bit of English idiom sounding oddly in his foreign tones.
Virginia laughed, spite of herself.
“Ah, I make you laugh,” said Alvar. “I wish I had attended more to my English lessons; but there was a time when it was not my intention to come to England, and I did not study. I am not like Cheriton and Jack, I do not love to study. It is very pleasant to smoke, and to do nothing; but I see it is not the custom here, and it is better, I think, to be like my brother.”
“Some people are rather fond of smoking and doing nothing even in England.”
“It is a different sort of doing nothing. I hear my father or Cheriton rebuke Bob for doing nothing; but then he is out of doors with some little animal in a bag – his ferret, I think it is called – to catch the rats; or he runs and gets hot; that is what he calls doing nothing.”
There was a sort of bonhommie in Alvar’s way of describing himself and his surroundings, and a charm in his manner which, added to a pair of eyes full of fire and expression, and a great deal of implied admiration for herself, produced no small effect on Virginia.
She saw that he was affectionate and ready to recognise the good in his brothers, and she knew that he had been deprived of his due share of home affection. She did not doubt that he was willing himself to do and to be all that he admired; and then – he was not boyish and blunt like his brothers, nor so full of mischief as Cheriton, nor with that indescribable want of something that made her wonder at Rupert’s charm in the eyes of Ruth; she had never seen any one like him.
She glanced up in his face with eyes that all unconsciously expressed her thoughts, and as he turned to her with a smile they came up to the vicarage garden, at the gate of which stood Parson Seyton talking to Mr Lester, who was on horseback beside him.
“Ha, squire,” said the parson, “Monsieur Alvar is a dangerous fellow among the lasses. Black eyes and foreign ways have made havoc with hearts all the world over.”
Mr Lester looked towards the approaching group. Virginia’s delicate face, shy and eager under drooping feathers, and the tall, slender Alvar, wearing his now scrupulously English morning suit with a grace that gave it a picturesque appropriateness, were in front. Ruth and Rupert lingered a little, and Nettie came running up from behind, with Rolla after her, and Dick Seyton lazily calling on her to stop. Mr Lester looked at his son, and a new idea struck him.
“I wish Alvar to make acquaintances,” he said. “Nothing but English society can accustom him to his new life.”
Here Alvar saw them, and raised his hat as he came up.
“Have you had a pleasant walk, Alvar?” said his father, less stiffly than usual.
“It has been altogether pleasant, sir,” said Alvar, “since Miss Seyton has been my companion.”
Virginia blushed, and went up to her uncle with a hasty question about the puppies that Nettie was to see, and no one exchanged a remark on the subject; but that night as they were smoking, Rupert rallied Alvar a little on the impression he was making.
Alvar did not misunderstand him; he looked at him straight.
“I had thought,” he said, “that it was here the custom to talk with freedom to young ladies. I see it is your practice, my cousin.”
“Yes, yes. Besides, I’m an old friend, you see. Of course it is the custom; but consequences sometimes result from it – pity if they didn’t.”
“But it may be,” said Alvar, “that as my father’s son, it is expected that I should marry if it should be agreeable to my father?”
“Possibly,” said Rupert, unable to resist trying experiments. “Fellows with expectations have to be careful, you know.”
“I thank you,” said Alvar. “But I do not mistake a lady who has been kind to me, or I should be a coxcomb. Good-night, my cousin.”
“Good-night,” said Rupert, feeling somewhat baffled, and a little angry; for, after all, he had been perfectly right.
Chapter Thirteen.
Two Sides of a Question
“Love me and leave me not.”
The hill that lay between Oakby and Elderthwaite was partly covered by a thick plantation of larches, through which passed a narrow footpath. In the summer, when the short turf under the trees was dry and sweet, when the blue sky peeped through the wide-spreading branches, and rare green ferns and blue harebells nestled in the low stone walls, the larch wood was a favourite resort; but in the winter, when the moorland winds were bleak and cold rather than fresh and free, when the fir-trees moaned and howled dismally instead of responding like harps to the breezes, before, in that northern region, one “rosy plumelet tufted the larch,” or one lamb was seen out on the fell side, it was a dreary spot enough.
All the more undisturbed had it been, and therefore all the more suitable for the secret meetings of Rupert and Ruth. Matters had not always run smooth between them. An unacknowledged tie needs faith and self-restraint if it is to sit easily; and at their very last parting Rupert expressed enough jealousy at the remembrance of Cheriton’s attentions to make Ruth furious at the implied doubt of her faith, forgetting that she was miserable if he played with Nettie, or talked for ten minutes to Virginia.
Rupert insisted that “Cherry meant mischief.” Ruth vehemently asserted “that it wasn’t in him to mean;” and after something that came perilously near a quarrel, she broke into
