ago! What will he think of me?”
Mary felt perplexed. She could not understand her sister’s embarrassment, and was therefore unable to help her. But the awkwardness lasted for a moment only. With a flush of evident gratification, Captain Beverley stepped forward.
“Miss West!” he said, eagerly. “I was almost sure it was you, but I scarcely hoped you would remember me. I had no idea you lived at Hathercourt. Is it your home?”
“Yes,” replied Lilias, though still with a shade of constraint in her manner, “my father – our father,” turning to Mary with a pretty sisterly air, “Mr Western, is the rector.”
“Dear me, how curious I did not know it,” said Captain Beverley. “Cheviott,” he continued, turning to his companion, “you remember our meeting Miss West – Western, I mean – at the ball at Brocklehurst the year before last?”
Mr Cheviott bowed, somewhat stiffly, it seemed to Mary.
“I fear you are mistaken, Arthur,” he said, “I do not think I ever had the honour of being introduced to Miss Western.”
“Arthur” looked annoyed, and as if he hardly knew what to do; Lilias’s face flushed again, and Miss Winstanley began talking to Mr Cheviott in a hurried, fussy manner, with so palpably evident an anxiety to set every one at ease that she only succeeded in making them all more uncomfortable. Mary, animated by a sudden consciousness of antagonism to Mr Cheviott, came quietly to the rescue.
“I think, Lilias,” she said to her sister, speaking distinctly, so that they all heard her, “I think mamma will be wondering why we are so long. If these ladies, Miss Winstanley and Miss – ”
“Cheviott,” put in Captain Beverley, hastily.
“Miss Cheviott, do not think it worth while to rest at the Rectory, perhaps we had better not interrupt them any longer. Of course,” she went on, turning to Miss Winstanley with a smile that showed she meant what she said, “if your carriage does not come soon, and we can do anything to help you, we shall be very glad. One of the boys can go to the village to see about it, if you like; we have no carriage, otherwise I am sure – ”
“Thank you, thank you,” interrupted Miss Winstanley, nervously glancing at her silent nephew, and, without his permission, not daring to commit herself to anything but generalities, “you are, really, so very kind, but I think the carriage is sure to come soon. Don’t you think so, Laurence?”
“It’s here now,” exclaimed Alys Cheviott, in a disappointed tone; “and Laurence,” she added, in a lower tone, but not low enough to prevent Mary’s hearing the words, “you are very, very cross.”
Mary was quite inclined to agree with her, but, looking up at the moment, she caught a smile on Mr Cheviott’s face as he made some little answer to his sister, a smile which so altered his expression that she felt puzzled. “I don’t like him,” she said to herself, “he is haughty and disagreeable, but still I fancy he could be nice if he liked.”
Another minute or two and the strangers were driven away – with smiles and thanks from pretty Alys and her aunt, and bows of equal deference, but differing in cordiality, from the two gentlemen. Lilias and Mary walked slowly homewards across the grass, Lilias unusually silent.
“Well, Lilias,” said the younger sister, after waiting a little to see if Lilias was not going to speak, “well, we have had quite an adventure for once.”
“Yes,” said Lilias, absently, “quite an adventure. But, oh, Mary,” she went on, with a sudden change of voice, “don’t speak of it; I am so disgusted with myself.”
“What for?” said Mary. “I didn’t understand. Was it about recognising that gentleman, Captain Beverley, you called him, I think? And some one called him Arthur – how curious!” she added to herself.
“Yes,” said Lilias, “it is about that. I met him two years ago, and danced with him twice, I think. I thought he was very nice-looking and danced well, but, of course, that was all I thought about him. I think I must have told you about him at the time; it was the year you did not go to the ball – Brooke was ill, don’t you remember, with the measles, and you were nursing him because you had had it – but I had nearly forgotten him, and then seeing him so unexpectedly again his name came into my head and I said it! It must have looked as if I had never seen a gentleman before to have remembered him so distinctly – oh, I am so ashamed of myself!”
“I don’t think you need to be. I think it was perfectly natural,” said Mary.
“Oh, yes, in one way, I know it was. I am not really ashamed of myself, I did nothing wrong. It is what those people must have thought of me,” said Lilias.
“I wish you would not care what people think of you,” answered Mary. “What does it matter? We shall probably never see any of them again. How pretty the girl was! By-the-bye, Captain Beverley’s name is Arthur, he may be a descendant of ‘Mawde’ in the tablet, Lilias. Her name was Beverley, and her father’s ‘Arthur.’ Very likely one of her sons would be called after her father. I wonder if that has anything to do with their coming here,” she went on, growing more interested in Captain Beverley than she had hitherto appeared.
“How do you mean?” asked Lilias.
“Why, supposing he is a great grandson, a great, great, great grandson – oh, more than that – there has been time for six or seven generations – supposing he is a descendant of Mawde’s, he may have something to do with this neighbourhood, and that may have brought him here.”
“We should have heard of him before this,” objected Lilias. “Papa knows every land-owner of any consequence in the country by name, and I never heard of any one called Beverley.”
“Here is papa,” said Mary, looking back just as Mr Western emerged from the church, where he had been detained later than usual by some little official discussion, “let us wait for him and ask him. Papa,” she continued, as her father came up to them, “do you know that one of those gentlemen who came to church is called Beverley?”
“And Mary is making up quite a romance about his being descended from the old woman on the tablet,” said Lilias, laughing, but yet not without interest. “There are no people of the name hereabouts now?”
“Beverley,” repeated Mr Western, “how do you know that is his name?”
The girls explained.
“No, there are no gentle-people of that name hereabouts nowadays,” said Mr Western. “The old Hathercourt Beverleys have quite died out, except, by-the-bye, – I was told the other day that old John Birley, who died at Hathercourt Edge last year, was a lineal descendant of theirs.”
“That rough old farmer!” exclaimed Mary, her thoughts flying back to “Mawde.”
“Yes, you remember him? It was Greville, I think, that was telling me about it. The name ‘Birley’ he said was only a corruption of Beverley. The old man was very proud of his descent. He left the farm and what money he had saved to a Mr Beverley, whom he believed to be of the same family – no one in this neighbourhood. By-the-bye, that may be the young man you are telling me about, Mary, which was he – the fair or the dark one?”
“The fair one,” replied Mary, “the other was a Mr Cheviott.”
“Cheviott – ah, indeed,” said Mr Western, with a tone of faintly discernible
