I mean. I come from another of her sons, who left these parts and married an heiress, I believe, but his descendants have had nothing to do with this place from that time to this. Isn’t it strange that Hathercourt, a part of it at least, should come back to me after all these generations?”
“It is very nice, I think,” said Mary. “I should be so proud of it, if I were you.”
Her eyes sparkled, and her face brightened up eagerly. For the first time it struck Captain Beverley that there was something very “taking” about the second Miss Western. But his glance did not rest on her; it travelled on to where Lilias sat behind the tea-tray, with a half-unconscious appeal to her for sympathy in what he was telling. Lilias, looking up, smiled.
“Yes,” she said, softly, “it is very strange.”
“Then,” began Mrs Western, with some little hesitation, “are you, may I ask, Captain Beverley, going to live altogether at Hathercourt Edge? You can hardly do so, though, in the house as it is at present. It is barely habitable, is it?”
“Very barely,” replied the young man. “You never saw such a place. But I must not grumble; poor old John kept the land up to the mark, though he spent nothing on the house. I don’t mean to settle here,” (Mrs Western breathed a sigh of relief), “I have another place which is let just now, but will soon be free again, and my cousin advises me to live there and farm it myself. All I mean to do here is to build a good farm-house, and establish some trusty man as bailiff, and then I can easily run down now and then – I am often at Romary – and see how things are going on. And this brings me to what I wanted to see Mr Western about. I want to ask his opinion of a young man here who has been recommended to me for my situation.”
“Mr Western will be very glad to tell you all he can, I am sure,” said the Rector’s wife. “I dare say he will be able to walk over to Hathercourt Edge to-morrow to see you, for about such a matter it would be better for you to speak to himself.”
“Thank you,” said Captain Beverley. “But I couldn’t think of giving Mr Western so much trouble. I can easily come over again, and if he is out it doesn’t matter – it is only a pleasant walk – and – and if I am not a great trouble, I shall be only too grateful to have some one to speak to, for I am dreadfully tired of the old farmhouse, and I must be here alone another fortnight. By then my cousins will be back at Romary, and I can take up my quarters there. You know Romary, of course?”
“No,” said Lilias, to whom the question seemed to be addressed, her colour rising a little; “at least, I have only been there once.”
“It is some miles from here, and we have no carriage,” said Mrs Western, simply. “Old Mrs Romary called on me when we first came here, but I never saw any more of them. We know very few of our neighbours, Captain Beverley, for we are not rich, and we live very quietly.” Mary looked up at her mother admiringly. Lilias glanced at Captain Beverley. His colour, too, had deepened a little.
“Then I must thank you all the more for being so kind to me,” he said, impulsively. “And, Mrs Western, if, as I shall really be your very nearest neighbour, you will let me be to some extent an exception to the rule, I shall thank you still more,” he added, with a sort of boyish heartiness which it was difficult to resist.
He had got up to go, and stood looking down at his hostess as he spoke with such a kindly expression in his honest blue eyes, and – he was so undeniably handsome and gentlemanlike that Mrs Western’s cold manner thawed.
“The thanks will, I think, be due from us to you if you come to see us now and then when you are in the neighbourhood; that is to say, at Hathercourt Edge. Romary is too far off for us to consider its inhabitants neighbours,” she replied. “And I don’t quite understand, but Romary is not your home, is it?”
“Oh dear, no,” he replied, evidently a little surprised at the question. “Romary belongs now to my cousin, Mr Cheviott. It has been his ever since his uncle’s death, but he has only lately come to live there. He was my guardian, and the best and wisest friend I have ever known, though not more than ten years older than myself,” he added, warmly.
“And that young lady – we thought her so pretty,” said Lilias – “she is Miss Cheviott, then, I suppose?”
“Yes, she is his sister. I am glad you think her pretty. She is a dear little thing,” he replied, looking pleased and gratified. “But I am really detaining you too long. Will you be so kind as to tell Mr Western that I shall hope to see him in a day or two? Good-bye, and thank you very much,” he said, as he shook hands with Mrs Western and her daughters, Lilias last.
“For a cup of tea?” she said, laughing.
“Yes, Miss Western, for a cup of tea,” he repeated.
“I like him,” said Mary, when the door had closed on their visitor; “he is honest, and unaffected, and kindly.”
“He is very boyish,” said Lilias; “somehow he seems more boyish than when I saw him two years ago.”
“When you saw him two years ago?” repeated Mrs Western. “I did not know you had ever seen him before.”
“Yes, mamma. I met him at my second Brocklehurst ball. Mary remembers my mentioning him,” replied Lilias, meekly enough. “I did not know where he had come from, or whom he was staying with, or anything about him, and indeed I had forgotten all about him till the other day when he came to church.”
“He is a pleasant-looking young man,” said Mrs Western.
“Pleasant-looking, mother?” exclaimed Mary. “I call him very handsome.”
Lilias smiled, but her mother looked grave.
“Well, well,” she said, “I dare say he is handsome; but in my opinion, my dears, there is great truth in the old saying, ‘handsome is that handsome does,’ and we do not know anything at all about this Captain Beverley’s doings, remember.”
“At least we know nothing ‘unhandsome’ about them,” said Mary, who seemed in an unusually argumentative mood.
“Oh dear, no. I have no reason to say anything against him. I know nothing whatever about him,” said Mrs Western, calmly; “but I do not like making acquaintance too quickly with young men. One cannot be too careful. And you know, my dears, I have always said if ever you do marry I hope and trust it will be some one quite in your own sphere.”
“Mamma!” exclaimed Lilias, growing scarlet, and with a touch of indignation in her tone, “why should you allude to such a thing? Just because a gentleman happens to have called to see papa on business – as if we could not have spoken two words to him without thinking if we should like to marry him.”
“You need not fire up so, Lilias,” replied her mother. “You very often speak about marrying, or not marrying, and I have heard you maintain it was gross affectation of girls to pretend they never thought about their future lives.”
“Yes,” said Lilias, “I know I have said so, and I think so, but still there is a difference between that and – Well, never mind. But, mother,” she went on, with returning playfulness, “I must warn you of one thing. If by ‘our own sphere’ you mean curates, then the sooner, as far as I am concerned, I can get out of my own sphere the better.”
Mrs Western did not laugh.
“Lilias,” she began, gravely, but the rest of her remonstrance was lost, for at that moment the drawing-room
