Both girls were very handsome, and for their pure and brilliant
complexion were doubtless indebted to the healthful breeze that swept
the green sides of the Denbigh hills, together with an occasional
_soupçon_ of that which comes from the waters of the Irish Sea.
It is difficult to say whether Winifred could be pronounced a brunette
or a blonde, her skin was so exquisitely fair, while her splendid hair
was a shade of the deepest brown, and her glorious sparkling eyes were
of the darkest violet blue. Their normal expression was quiet and
subdued; they only flashed up at times, and she was a girl that
somehow every colour became. In pure white one might have thought her
lovely, and lovelier still, perhaps, in black or blue or rose, or any
other tint or shade. Her fine lithe figure appeared to perfection in
her close-fitting habit of dark-blue cloth, and the masses of her hair
being tightly bound up under her hat, revealed the contour of her
slender neck and delicately formed ear.
Dora was a smaller and younger edition of her sister--more girlish and
more of a hoyden, with her lighter tresses, half golden in hue,
floating loose over her shoulders and to beneath her waist from under
a smart little hat, the feather and fashion of which imparted intense
piquancy to the character of her somewhat irregular but remarkably
pretty face and--we must admit it--rather _retroussé_ nose.
Pride and a little reserve were rather the predominant style of the
elder and dark-eyed sister; merriment, fun, and rather noisy
flirtation were that of Dora, who permitted herself to laugh at times
when her sister would barely have smiled, and to say things on which
the other would never have ventured; but this _espièglerie_ and a
certain bearing of almost rantipole--if one may use such a term--were
thought to become her.
Winifred rode a tall wiry nag, a hand or two higher than her father's
stout active hunter; but Dora preferred to scamper about on a
beautiful Welsh pony, the small head, high withers, flat legs, and
round hoofs of which it no doubt inherited, as Sir Madoc would have
said, from the celebrated horse Merlin.
"Hope you'll stay with us till the twelfth of next month," said he.
"The grouse are looking well."
"Our time is doubtful, our short leave conditional, Sir Madoc,"
replied Phil Caradoc, who, however, was not looking at the Baronet,
but at Winifred, in the hope that the alleged brevity of his visit
might find him some tender interest in her eyes, or stir some chord by
its suggestiveness in her breast; but Winny, indifferent apparently to
separation and danger so far as he was concerned, seemed intent on
twirling the silky mane of her horse with the lash of her whip.
"Then, in about a fortnight after, we shall be blazing at the
partridges," resumed Sir Madoc, to tempt us. "But matters are looking
ill for the pheasants in October, for the gamekeeper tells me that the
gapes have been prevalent among them. The poults were hatched early,
and the wet weather from the mountains has made more havoc than our
guns are likely to do."
"Long before that time, Sir Madoc, I hope we shall be making havoc
among the Russians," replied Phil, still glancing covertly at Miss
Lloyd.
"Ah, I hope not!" said she, roused apparently this time. "I look
forward to this most useless war with horror and dismay. So many dear
friends have gone, so many more are going, it makes one quite sad! O,
I shall never forget that morning in London when the poor Guards
marched!"
This was addressed, not to Phil Caradoc, but to _me_.
"We knew that we should meet you," said she, colouring, and adding a
little hastily, "We asked Lady Estelle to accompany us; but--"
"She is far too--what shall I call it?--aristocratic or
unimpressionable to think of going to meet any one," interrupted her
sister.
"Don't say so, Dora! Yet I thought the loveliness of the evening would
have tempted her. And Bob Spurrit the groom has broken a new pad
expressly for her, by riding it for weeks with a skirt."
So there was no temptation but "the loveliness of the evening,"
thought I; while Dora said,
"But she preferred playing over to Mr. Guilfoyle that piece of German
music he gave her yesterday."
All this was not encouraging. She knew that I was coming--a friend in
whom she could not help having, from the past, rather more than a
common interest--and yet she had declined to accompany those frank and
kindly girls. Worse than all, perhaps she had at that moment this Mr.
Hawkesby Guilfoyle hanging over her admiringly at the piano, while she
played _his_ music, presented to her doubtless with some suggestive,
secret or implied, meaning in the sentiment or the title of it.
Jealousy readily suggested much of this, and a great deal more. That
Lady Estelle was at Craigaderyn Court had been my prevailing idea when
accepting so readily my kind friend's invitation. Then I should see
her in a very little time now! I had been resolved to watch well how
she received me, though it would be no easy task to read the secret
thoughts of one so well and so carefully trained to keep all human
emotions under perfect control, outwardly at least--a "Belgravian
thoroughbred," as I once heard Sir Madoc term her; but if she changed
colour, however faintly, if there was the slightest perceptible tremor
in her voice, or a flash of the eye, which indicated that which, under
the supervision of the usually astute dowager her mother, she dared
scarcely to betray--an interest in one such as me--it would prove at
least that my presence was not indifferent to her. Thus much only did
I hope, and of such faint hope had my heart been full until now, when
I heard all this; and if I was piqued by her absence, I was still more
by the cause of it; though had I reflected for a moment, I ought to
have known that the very circumstances under which I had last parted
from her in London, with an expected avowal all but uttered and
hovering on my lips when leading her to the carriage, were sufficient
to preclude a girl so proud as she from coming to meet me, even in the
avenue, and when accompanied by Winifred and Dora Lloyd.
"Is Mr. Guilfoyle a musician?" I asked.
"A little," replied Dora; "plays and sings too; but I can't help
laughing at him--and it is so rude."
"He says that he is a friend of yours, Harry Hardinge; is he so?'
asked Sir Madoc, with his bushy brows depressed for a moment.
"Well, if losing to him once at pool mysteriously, also on a certain
horse, while he scratched out of its engagements another on which I
stood sure to win, make a friend, he is one. I have met him at his
club, and should think that he--he--"
"Is not a good style of fellow, in fact," said Sir Madoc in a low
tone, and rather bluntly.
"Perhaps so; nor one I should like to see at Craigaderyn Court." I
cared not to add "especially in the society of Lady Cressingham,"
after whom he dangled, on the strength of some attentions or friendly
services performed on the Continent.
"And so you lost money to him? We have a Welsh proverb beginning,
_Dyled ar bawb_--"
"We shall have barely time to dress, dear papa," said Miss Lloyd,
increasing the speed of her horse, as she seemed to dread the Welsh
proclivities of her parent; "and remember that we have quite a
dinner-party to-day."
"Yes," added Dora; "two country M.P.s are coming; but, O dear! they
will talk nothing but blue-book with papa, or about the crops, fat
pigs, and the county pack; and shake their heads about ministerial
policy and our foreign prestige, whatever that may be. Then we have an
Indian colonel with only half a liver, the doctor says, and two Indian
judges without any at all."
"Dora!" exclaimed Miss Lloyd in a tone of expostulation. "Well, it is
what the doctor said," persisted Dora; "and if he is wrong can I help
it?"
"But people don't talk of such things."
"Then people shouldn't have them."
"A wild Welsh girl this," said Sir Madoc; "neither schooling in
Switzerland nor London has tamed her."
"And we are to have several county gentlemen who are great in the
matters of turnips, top-dressing, and Welsh mutton; four young ladies,
each with a flirtation on hand; and four old ones, deep in religion
and scandal, flannel and coals for the poor; so, Mr. Hardinge, you and
Mr. Caradoc will be quite a double relief to us--to me, certainly."
"O, Dora, how your tongue runs on!" exclaimed Winifred.
"And then we have Lady Naseby to act as materfamilias, and play
propriety for us all in black velvet and diamonds. Winny, eldest
daughter of the house, is evidently unequal to the task."
"And the coming fête," said I, "is it in honour of anything in
particular?"
"Yes, something very particular indeed," replied Dora.
"Of what?"
"Me."
"You!"
"My birthday--I shall be eighteen," she added, shaking back the heavy
masses of her golden hair.
"And she has actually promised to have one round dance with Lord
Pottersleigh," said Winny, laughing heartily.
"I did but promise out of mischief; I trust, however, the Viscount
will leave off his goloshes for that day, though we are to dance on
the grass, or I hope he may forget all about it. Old Potter, I call
him," added the young lady in a _sotto-voce_ to me, "at least, when
the Cressinghams are not present."
"Why them especially?"
"Because he is such a particular friend of theirs."
This was annoyance number two; for this wealthy but senile old peer
had been a perpetual adorer of Lady Estelle, favoured too, apparently,
by her mother, and had been on more than one occasion a _bête noire_
to me; and now I was to meet him here again!
"Papa has told you that I mean to part with my poor pet goat--Carneydd
Llewellyn, so called from the mountain whence he came. He is to be
sent to the regiment--in your care, too."
"Why deprive yourself of a favourite? Why deprive it of such care as
yours? Among soldiers," said I, "the poor animal will sorely miss the
kindness and caresses you bestow upon it."
"I shall be so pleased to think that our Welsh Fusileers, in the lands
to which they are going, will have something so characteristic to
remind them of home, of the wild hills of Wales, perhaps to make them
think of the donor. Besides, papa says the corps has never been
without this emblem of the old Principality since it was raised in the
year of the Revolution."
"Most true; but how shall I--how shall _we_--ever thank you?"
I could see that her nether lip--a lovely little pouting lip it
was--quivered slightly, and that her eyes were full of strange light,
though bent downward on her horse's mane; and now I felt that, for
reasons apparent enough, I was cold, even unkind, to this warm-hearted
girl; for we had been better and dearer friends before we knew the
Cressinghams. She checked her horse a little abruptly, and began to
address some of the merest commonplaces to Phil Caradoc; who, with his
thick brown curly hair parted in the middle, his smiling handsome face
and white regular teeth, was finding great favour in the eyes of the
laughing Dora. But now we were drawing near Craigaderyn Court. The
scenery was Welsh, and yet the house and all its surroundings were in
character genuinely English, though to have hinted so much might have
piqued Sir Madoc. The elegance and comfort of the mansion were
English, and English too was the rich verdure of the velvet lawn and
the stately old chase, the trees of which were ancient enough--some of
them at least--to have sheltered Owen Glendower, or echoed to the
bugle of Llewellyn ap Seisalt, whose tall grave-stone stands amid the
battle-mounds on grassy Castell Coch.
At a carved and massive entrance-door we alighted, assisted the ladies
to dismount, and then, gathering up their trains, they swept merrily
up the steps and into the house, to prepare for dinner; while Sir
Madoc, ere he permitted us to retire, though the first bell had been
rung, led us into the hall; a low-ceiled, irregular, and oak-panelled
room, decorated with deers' antlers, foxes' brushes crossed, and
stuffed birds of various kinds, among others a gigantic golden eagle,
shot by himself on Snowdon. This long apartment was so cool that,
though the season was summer, a fire burned in the old stone
fireplace; and on a thick rug before it lay a great, rough, red eyed
staghound, that made one think of the faithful brach that saved
Llewellyn's heir. The windows were half shaded by scarlet hangings; a
hunting piece or two by Sneyders, with pictures of departed
favourites, horses and dogs, indicated the tastes of the master of the
house and of his ancestors; and there too was the skull of the _last_
wolf killed in Wales, more than a century ago, grinning on an oak
bracket. The butler, Owen Gwyllim, who occasionally officiated as a
harper, especially at Yule, was speedily in attendance, and Sir Madoc
insisted on our joining him in a stiff glass of brandy-and-water, "as
a whet," he said; and prior to tossing off which he gave a hoarse
guttural toast in Welsh, which his butler alone understood, and at
which he laughed heartily, with the indulged familiarity of an old
servant.
I then retired to make an unusually careful toilette; to leave nothing
undone or omitted in the way of cuffs, studs, rings, and so forth, in
all the minor details of masculine finery; hearing the while from a
distance the notes of a piano in another wing of the house come
floating through an open window. The air was German;--could I doubt
whose white fingers were gliding over the keys, and _who_ might be
standing by, and feeling himself, perhaps, somewhat master of the
situation?