it would have been confidentially, and he would hardly be likely to trouble Brooke about anything of that kind now,” thought Mr Cheviott, when he found himself in the carriage again beside his sister, driving rapidly away from Madame de Briancourt’s.
Alys noticed his abstraction.
“What are you thinking of, Laurence?”
“Only what a very little world this is!”
“I know,” exclaimed Alys, not sorry to draw the conversation round to a point where her mind was not at rest. “You are thinking how strange it was that we should twice in one day hear Hathercourt Rectory spoken of – at least, not twice spoken of, but I mean mentioned, in Arthur’s letter, and again by Mrs Brabazon. Laurence, were you vexed with what I said of the Westerns? Did it seem like contradicting you?”
“Oh, no, you could not help saying what you thought – nor could I,” he added, after a little pause.
“I did think those girls so pretty, especially the eldest one, and not only pretty, but something more – good and nice.”
“I don’t see how they can be superior, however, considering their disadvantages,” said Mr Cheviott, musingly. “I don’t agree with you in admiring the elder one more than the other. There was something not commonplace about that younger girl,” and a curious feeling shot across his mind as he recalled the young face with the kindly honest eyes and half shy smile that had met his glance that Sunday morning in the porch of the old church – a feeling almost of disloyalty in the words and tones with which he had replied to Mrs Brabazon’s inquiries – a ridiculous feeling altogether to have in connection with a girl he had only seen once in his life, and that for not more than five minutes. But the vision of Mary Western’s face had imprinted itself on his memory, and refused to be effaced.
Alys fancied that the prejudice she had suspected was passing away; it could not have been very deep after all. She determined to take a bold step, and one that she had been meditating for some time.
“Laurence,” she said, “when we go back to Romary I wish you would let me know those girls. I can’t tell you why I have taken such a fancy to them, but I have. You could soon judge by seeing a little more of them if they are nice girls, and I am sure you would find they are. I have never had many companions, and it is dull sometimes – rather dull, I mean.”
She looked up in his face appealingly. It was very grave.
“Surely,” he was saying to himself, “the Fates are dead against me. What can have put it into the child’s head to want to set up a romantic friendship with these Westerns? Can Arthur have to do with it? Can he possibly have written anything to Alys besides what I saw?”
“You are vexed with me, Laurence,” she said, deprecatingly, as he did not speak. Then he looked at her and felt ashamed of his suspicions, and his tone was gentle when he answered:
“No, I am not vexed with you, but a little disappointed, perhaps, at your asking anything so foolish. Just reflect, dear, what can you know of those girls to make you wish to choose them for friends – ”
“They have such nice faces.”
“And what I know of the family is not to their advantage,” pursued Mr Cheviott, without noticing the interruption. “None of the Withenden people speak cordially of them, or indeed seem to know anything about them.”
“And you call that to their disadvantage, Laurence!” exclaimed Alys – “you who have so often said what a set of snobs the Withenden people are. Of course it is very easy to see why the Westerns are disliked; they won’t be patronised by the county people, and they are too refined for the Withenden set, and so they keep to themselves, and the girls’ beauty makes everybody jealous of them.”
She looked up in her brother’s face triumphantly, feeling that she had the best of it, and so, too, in his heart, felt Mr Cheviott. But he could not afford to own himself vanquished, and took refuge in being aggrieved.
“Very well, Alys,” he said, coldly, “I cannot argue with you; you will be of age in three years, and then you can choose your own friends, but while you are under my guardianship, I can but direct you to the best of my judgment, however you may dislike it.”
Alys’s eyes filled with tears.
“Oh, Laurence, don’t speak to me like that; I am so unlucky to-day. I did not – indeed I did not mean to vex you; I should never want to go against your wishes —never, not if I live to be a hundred instead of twenty-one. Laurence, do forgive me!”
And Laurence smiled and “forgave,” though wishing she were convinced as well as submissive, for somewhere down in the secret recesses of his consciousness, there lurked a misgiving which shrank from boldly facing daylight as to whether his arguments had altogether succeeded in convincing himself.
“I am very sorry to hear of Basil Brooke being so ill,” he said by way of changing the conversation.
“Is that one of Mrs Brabazon’s nephews?”
“Yes, the elder; they have come to Paris to try some new doctor, but it is no use. I thought so when he first got ill; and now what his aunt says shows it is true. Poor fellow!”
“Have you known him long? I don’t think I ever heard you speak of him before,” said Alys.
“He was more a friend of Arthur’s than mine; they were in the same regiment. But here we are at Mrs Feston’s.”
On the whole, Alys enjoyed these few last days in Paris much more than the weeks which had preceded them. She was touched by her brother’s evident anxiety that she should do so. Never had she known him more indulgent and considerate, but yet he was less cheerful than usual – at times unmistakably anxious and uneasy. There came no more letters from Captain Beverley, but Alys was not sorry.
“It was something in that letter of Arthur’s that annoyed Laurence so the other day,” she thought to herself; “and fond as I am of Arthur, I couldn’t let him or any one come between Laurence and me.”
And she was not quite sure if she felt pleased or the reverse when her brother told her that, in all probability Captain Beverley would be their guest almost as soon as they reached Romary.
“You haven’t written to tell him when we are going home, have you, Alys?”
Alys looked up from her letter to Miss Winstanley in surprise at the inquiry.
“I?” she said; “oh dear, no. I leave all that to you of course. I have not answered Arthur’s letter at all; there seems to have been so much to do this last day or two.”
Her brother seemed pleased and yet not pleased.
“It is just as well. I don’t think I shall tell him either. We’ll take him by surprise – drive over to see him in his bachelor quarters at the farm-house the day after we get home, eh?”
“Oh, yes, do,” exclaimed Alys, eagerly. “We’ll say we have come to luncheon! What fun it will be; for Arthur has about as much notion of housekeeping as the man in the moon, and he will look so foolish if he has to tell us he has nothing in the house but eggs!”
“You don’t suppose he has been living on nothing but eggs all this time, do you?”
“He may have had a chop now and then for a change,”
