FOR WHOM THE JEWELS WERE INTENDED.
Clare was seated in a shady corner of the library, looking
alternately at the German map in Murray's Guide and the diamond ring
which she had first received from Trevor Chute on the eventful
moonlight night at Carnaby Court.
How strange that it should be on her finger again after all!
'And to think,' she muttered, 'that papa should so unkindly and, with
bad taste have stung his tender and loving heart by speaking to _him_
of me and that big butterfly soldier, Desmond! No wonder it is that
Trevor seemed cold, constrained, and strange. Oh, my love, what must
you have thought of me!'
And the girl, as she uttered this aloud, pressed the ring to her
lips, while her eyes filled with tears. Then she sank into one of
her reveries, from which, after a time, she was roused by the
entrance of her father. He was attired for a ride in the Row, had
his whip in his hand, and was buttoning his faultlessly fitting
gloves on his thin white aristocratic hands with the care that he
usually exhibited; but Clare could perceive that his face wore an
undoubtedly cloudy expression.
'Papa, for whom were those lovely jewels that came here for
inspection yesterday?' she asked.
'Not for you, Miss Collingwood.'
'Yet they were sent here.'
'A mistake of the shop-people.'
Clare looked up with surprise in her sweet face, for his manner,
though studiously polite in tone, was curt and strange.
'Perhaps they were for Ida?' said Clare, gently.
'No.'--'Violet, then?'
'No.'--'For whom, then, papa?'
'The sister of him you rejected yesterday.'
'Evelyn Desmond!'
'Yes, Miss Collingwood; and thereby hangs a tale,' replied Sir
Carnaby, giving a final touch to his stock in a mirror opposite.
'Did any silly fancy for this man who has just returned to
India--this Captain Chute--influence you in this matter?'
Clare coloured painfully, but said 'No.'
'Glad to hear it, Clare, as I thought all that stuff was forgotten
long ago,' he continued, with the nearest approach to a frown that
was ever seen on his usually impassible visage.
'You asked him to dine at your club, papa,' said Clare, evasively.
'Yes, out of mere politeness, to thank him, as Beverley's friend, for
visiting Ida, though I fear the visit may make her grief a greater
bore than ever. But why did you decline an alliance that would be so
advantageous as that with Desmond?'
'Simply because I cannot love him, and I don't wish to leave you,
dearest papa; now that you are getting old.'
'Old!' He was frowning in earnest now.
'Pardon me, papa, I love no man sufficiently to make me leave your
roof for his.'
'What stuff and nonsense is this, Clare Collingwood!'
'It is neither, but truth, papa.'
'Though you have the bad taste to inform me that I am getting old,
permit me to remind you that in many things you, Clare, are a mere
child, though a woman in years.'
'A child, perhaps, compared with such women as Desmond's sister
Evelyn,' replied Clare, with some annoyance.
'And as a woman in years, I, foreseeing the time when I could not
have you always to reign over my table at Carnaby Court or in
Piccadilly, have deemed it necessary to provide myself with a--a----'
'Papa!'
'Well, a substitute,' he added, giving a finishing adjust to his
gloves, and then looking Clare steadily in the face.
'In the person of Evelyn Desmond!' she exclaimed, in a breathless
voice, and becoming very pale.
'Precisely, my dear Miss Collingwood. She has promised to fill up in
my heart all the fearful void left there by the loss of your good
mother. I meant to have told you this long ago, but--but it was an
awkward subject to approach.'
'So I should think!'
'With one who comports herself like you; and--ah--in fact, now that
we are about it, I may mention that the marriage has been postponed
only in consequence of Beverley's death, Ida's mourning, illness, and
all that sort of thing.'
'So my sacrifice in declining poor Trevor Chute, after all his faith,
love, and cruel treatment, was uncalled for,' thought Clare, as she
stood like a marble statue, with scorn growing on her lovely lip,
while endeavouring to realize the startling tidings now given to her.
'Is _this_ to be the end of Evelyn's endless manoeuvring and
countless flirtations?' she exclaimed after a pause.
'Miss Collingwood, I spoke of Miss Desmond,' said he.
'So did I,' replied Clare, with growing anger.
'Don't be so impulsive--rude, I should say--it is bad form, bad
style, very.'
'Poor mamma!' sighed Clare; 'she was a good and true gentlewoman.'
'That I grant you, but a trifle cold and stately.'
'When she died I thought it is only when angels leave us that we see
the light of heaven on their wings.'
'Now don't be melodramatic; it is absurd, and to be emotional is bad
taste. As one cuckoo does not make a spring any more than one
swallow a summer, so no more should one affair of the human heart
make up the end of a human existence.'
'Are you really in earnest about this, papa?'
'Of course, though I am not much in earnest about anything usually;
it is not worth one's while.'
'At a certain age, perhaps,' thought Clare; 'but you were earnest
enough once, in dismissing poor Trevor Chute.'
'You will break this matter to your sisters,' said he, preparing to
leave her.
'My sisters!' said Clare, bitterly and sadly. 'Oh, papa! think of
Violet's prospects with--with' (she feared to add such a
chaperon)--'and of Ida, so sad, so delicate in health.'
'Nonsense, Miss Collingwood, Ida will soon marry again; such absurd
grief never lasts; and I am sure that Vane loves her still.'
'Then _he_ is not supposed to have got over "that stuff," as you
think Trevor Chute and I have done.'
'Miss Collingwood, I do not like my words repeated; so with your
permission we shall cease the subject, and I shall bid you
good-morning.'
Whenever he was offended with any of his own family the tone he
adopted was one of elaborate politeness; and twiddling his eyeglass,
with a kind of Dundreary skip, this model father, this 'awful dad' of
Clare, departed to the abode of his inamorata.
Clare remained for some time standing where he had left her as if
turned to stone. The proud and sensitive girl's cheek burned with
mingled shame and anger as she thought of the ridicule, the perhaps
coarse gibes of the clubs, and general irony of society, which such
an alliance was apt to excite; and with all the usual command of
every emotion peculiar to her set and style, as this conviction came
upon her, tears hot and swift rushed into her sweet dark eyes.
Could Sir Carnaby have been so insane as to contemplate a double
alliance with that fast family? she asked of herself.
'It would have made us all more than ever ridiculous!' she muttered
aloud; and then she thought with more pleasure of her re-engagement
with Trevor Chute, the promise given, and which she would certainly
redeem; yet she fairly wept for the price of its redemption, as she
shrank with a species of horror from seeing that 'Parky party,' as
she knew the men about town called the fair Evelyn, occupying the
place of her dead mother at home and abroad, and presented at Court
and elsewhere in the Collingwood jewels.
Vanity, perhaps, as much as anything else, was the cause of this new
idea in the mind of the shallow Sir Carnaby. Though he felt
perfectly conscious that his own day was past, he would not
acknowledge it. He knew well, too, that though many enjoyed his
dinners and wines, his crushes in Piccadilly, and his cover-shooting
at Carnaby Court, and that many tolerated him for the sake of his
rank, position, and charming daughters, they deemed him 'no end of an
old bore,' and this conviction galled and cut him to the quick.
Hence, if Evelyn Desmond became his wife, the fact would be a kind of
protest against _Time_ itself!
'How society will laugh! it is intolerable!' exclaimed Ida,
thoroughly rousing herself when she heard the startling tidings.
'You, Clare, were ever his favourite--the one who, as he said always,
reminded him most of poor mamma 'when she last folded her pale, thin
hands so meekly, and after kissing us all, gave up her soul to God;
yet he could tell you, in this jaunty way, that another was to take
her place, and that other was such a woman as Evelyn Desmond!'
Already the rumour of 'the coming event' must, they thought, be known
in town, else wherefore the hint thrown out so vaguely by Trevor
Chute? Already! The mortification of the girls was unspeakable.
Had the unwelcome announcement been made to her but a day sooner, at
least before her chance interview with Trevor--that interview so full
of deep and tender interest to them both--she might have been tempted
to make a promise more distinct than she had given, for Clare's
gentle heart was full of indignation now.
Trevor Chute could not now make, as in the past time, such
settlements as her father's ambition required and deemed necessary;
yet his means were ample, and she had lands, riches, and position
enough for both; so why should she not be his wife?
Such are the idiosyncrasies of human nature, that her father, who
once liked Trevor Chute, now disliked, and more than disliked him,
because he felt quite sensible that he had done the frank but
unfortunate soldier who had loved his daughter a wrong.
To stay in town with this engagement on the _tapis_, and this
marriage in prospect, was more, however, than Clare cared to endure,
or Ida either. When it was pressed upon the baronet that the three
sisters should go to Carnaby Court or elsewhere, he affected much
surprise, as they had barely reached the middle of the season, and
the engagement list contained many affairs towards which Clare, and
certainly Violet, had looked forward with interest.
Though he made a show of some opposition to all this, Sir Carnaby was
not unwilling to be left in town alone at this time, where he had to
be in frequent attendance upon his intended, where there were
settlements to arrange, a _trousseau_ to prepare, and jewels to
select, so the plan of Clare and Ida was at once adopted.