VANE TREVOR WALKS DOWN TO SEE MISS VIOLET
Looking at himself in his glass next morning, Vane Trevor pronounced the
_coup d’œil_ “awfully seedy. This sort of thing, by Jove, it will never
do, it would wear out any fellow; where’s the good in putting off?
there’s no screw loose, there’s nothing against me; I hope I stand
pretty well here—hang it⸺I’ll walk down to-day,” and he looked over the
slopes to sunny Gilroyd, “and if a good opportunity turns up, I’ll speak
to Miss Darkwell.”
And though he had taken care, in secret mercy to his nerves, to state
his resolve hypothetically, his heart made two or three strange throbs
and experienced a kind of sinking like that said to attend, on the eve
of battle, an order to prepare for action.
Accordingly, before twelve o’clock Vane Trevor walked into the porch of
Gilroyd, and rang the bell beside the open door, and stood with the gold
head of his cane to his chin, looking on the woodlands toward Revington,
and feeling as he might have felt in an ominous dream.
“Miss Perfect at home?” he inquired of the maid, with a haggard simper.
“She was in the drawing-room,” into which room, forgetting the
preliminary of announcement, he pushed his way. She was not there, but
he heard her talking to Winnie Dobbs in the gallery.
“Just passing by; afraid I’m very troublesome, but I could not resist,”
pleaded Vane Trevor, as he glanced over Miss Perfect’s gray silk
shoulder, and somewhat old-fashioned collar, toward the door, expecting,
perhaps, another apparition.
“I’m very glad you’ve come, Mr. Trevor.—Shall we sit down? for I want to
ask you to satisfy me upon a point.”
This was a day of agitations for Trevor, and his heart made an odd
little dance, and a sudden drop, and though he smiled, he felt his cheek
grow a little pale.
“By Jove!” thought Trevor as he placed himself near Aunt Dinah, “she’ll
save me a lot of trouble, and open the subject all in a sentence.”
He was leaning against the window case, and the damask curtains, though
somewhat the worse of the sun, made a gorgeous drapery about him, as
with folded arms, and trying to look perfectly serene, he looked down on
Miss Perfect’s face. The lady seemed to have some little difficulty
about speaking, and cleared her voice, and looked out of the window for
help, and all the time the young man felt very oddly. At last she said—
“I had made up my mind not to allude to the subject, but last night,
something occurred which has induced me just to ask a question or two.”
Aunt Dinah paused; and with rather pale lips, Vane Trevor smiled an
assurance that he would be too happy to answer any question which Miss
Perfect might please to ask.
Again a little silence—again the odd sensation in Vane’s heart, and the
same sickening sense of suspense, and he felt he could not stand it much
longer.
“I said I would not allude again to William Maubray, but I have altered
that resolution. I mean, however, to ask but a question or two.”
“Oh?” was all that Trevor uttered, but he felt that he could have wished
the old woman and William Maubray in a sack at the bottom of his best
pond at Revington.
“I wish to know, the Kincton Knoxes, aren’t they a leading people
rather, in their part of the world?”
“Oh, dear, yes. Kincton is one of the best places in the county,”
ejaculated Trevor, who being a kinsman, bore a handsome testimony.
“And—and—the young lady, Miss Clara Knox, she, I suppose, is—is
admired?”
“So she is, by Jove—I know, _I_ admired her awfully—so admired that the
fellows won’t let one another marry her, by Jove!—he, he, he! Very fine
girl, though, and I believe her father, or rather her mother, will give
her a lot of money.”
Miss Perfect looked on the table, not pleased, very thoughtfully, and
Vane Trevor looked down at her foreshortened countenance listlessly.
“And you spoke, you remember, of an idea that—that in fact it would end
in a _marriage_,” resumed Miss Perfect.
“Did I really say? well, but you won’t mention what I say, upon my
honour, and quite seriously, I should not wonder a bit. It is not
altogether what she said, you know, Mrs. Kincton Knox, I mean, though
that was as strong as you could well imagine—but her manner; I know her
perfectly, and when she wishes you to understand a thing—and I assure
you that’s what she wished me to suppose—and I, really I can’t
understand it; it seems to me perfectly incomprehensible, like a sort of
infatuation, for she’s one of the sharpest women alive, Mrs. Kincton
Knox; but, by Jove, both she and Clara, they seem to have quite lost
their heads about Maubray. I never heard anything like it, upon my
honour.”
And Trevor, who had by this time quite shaken off the chill of his
suspense, laughed very hilariously, till Aunt Dinah said, with some
displeasure—
“For the life of me, I can’t see anything ridiculous in it. William
Maubray is better connected than they, and he’s the handsomest young man
I ever beheld in my life; and if she has money enough of her own, for
_both_, I can’t see what objection or difficulty there can be.”
“Oh! certainly—certainly not on those grounds; only what amused me was,
there’s a disparity; you know—she’s, by Jove! she _is_—she’s five years
older, and that’s something.”
“And—and if it _is_ to be, how _soon_ do you suppose it likely?” asked
Miss Perfect, fixing her eyes anxiously on him.
“Well, you know, I know no more than the man in the moon; but if they
really mean it, I don’t see what’s to delay it,” answered Trevor.
“Because”—hesitated Aunt Dinah, “I have reason to know that if that
unfortunate young man—not that I have any reason to care more than
anyone else, should marry before the lapse of five years, he will be
utterly ruined, and undone by so doing.”
Vane Trevor stood expecting an astounding revelation, but Aunt Dinah
proceeded—
“And therefore as _you_ are his friend—of course it’s nothing to me—I
thought you might as well hear it, and if you chose to take that
trouble, let him know,” said Miss Perfect.
He looked a little hard at Miss Perfect, and she as steadily on him.
“I will, certainly—that is, if _you_ think I _ought_. But I hope it
won’t get me into a scrape with the people there.”
“I _do_ think you ought,” said Miss Perfect.
“I—I suppose _he’ll_ understand the reason?” suggested Vane Trevor, half
interrogatively.
“If you say—I _think_, if you say—that I said I had _reason_ to
_know_”—and Aunt Dinah paused.
Vane Trevor, looking a little amazed, repeated—
“I’m to say, you said you had reason to know?”
“_Yes_, and—and—I _think_ he’ll understand—and if he should not, you may
say—a—_yes_, you _may_, it has reached me through Henbane.”
“I beg pardon—through _what_?” said Vane Trevor, inclining his ear.
“Henbane,” said Miss Perfect very sharply.
“Henbane?”
“_Yes._”
“By Jove!” exclaimed Trevor.
A considerable silence ensued, during which a variety of uncomfortable
misgivings respecting the state of Miss Perfect’s mind floated through
his own. He concluded, however, that there was some language of symbols
established between Miss Perfect and her nephew, in which Henbane stood
for some refractory trustee, or rich old uncle.
So he said, more like himself—
“Well, I shan’t forget. I’ll take care to let him know, and you may
depend upon me.”
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