In the autumn holiday-time friends in the south, who happened to be
visiting Scotland, were invited to stop at Mount Morven on their way to
the Highlands; and were accustomed to meet the neighbors of the Linleys
at dinner on their arrival. The time for this yearly festival had now
come round again; the guests were in the house; and Mr. and Mrs. Linley
were occupied in making their arrangements for the dinner-party. With
her unfailing consideration for every one about her, Mrs. Linley did not
forget Sydney while she was sending out her cards of invitation.
“Our table will be full at dinner,” she said to her husband; “Miss
Westerfield had better join us in the evening with Kitty.”
“I suppose so,” Linley answered with some hesitation.
“You seem to doubt about it, Herbert. Why?”
“I was only wondering--”
“Wondering about what?”
“Has Miss Westerfield got a gown, Catherine, that will do for a party?”
Linley’s wife looked at him as if she doubted the evidence of her own
senses. “Fancy a man thinking of that!” she exclaimed. “Herbert, you
astonish me.”
He laughed uneasily. “I don’t know how I came to think of it--unless it
is that she wears the same dress every day. Very neat; but (perhaps I’m
wrong) a little shabby too.”
“Upon my word, you pay Miss Westerfield a compliment which you have
never paid to me! Wear what I may, you never seem to know how _I_ am
dressed.”
“I beg your pardon, Catherine, I know that you are always dressed well.”
That little tribute restored him to his place in his wife’s estimation.
“I may tell you now,” she resumed, with her gentle smile, “that you only
remind me of what I had thought of already. My milliner is at work for
Miss Westerfield. The new dress must be your gift.”
“Are you joking?”
“I am in earnest. To-morrow is Sydney’s birthday; and here is _my_
present.” She opened a jeweler’s case, and took out a plain gold
bracelet. “Suggested by Kitty,” she added, pointing to an inlaid
miniature portrait of the child. Herbert read the inscription: _To
Sydney Westerfield with Catherine Linley’s love._ He gave the bracelet
back to his wife in silence; his manner was more serious than usual--he
kissed her hand.
The day of the dinner-party marked an epoch in Sydney’s life.
For the first time, in all her past experience, she could look in the
glass, and see herself prettily dressed, with a gold bracelet on her
arm. If we consider how men (in one way) and milliners (in another)
profit by it, vanity is surely to be reckoned, not among the vices but
among the virtues of the sex. Will any woman, who speaks the truth,
hesitate to acknowledge that her first sensations of gratified vanity
rank among the most exquisite and most enduring pleasures that she has
ever felt? Sydney locked her door, and exhibited herself to herself--in
the front view, the side view, and the back view (over the shoulder)
with eyes that sparkled and cheeks that glowed in a delicious confusion
of pride and astonishment. She practiced bowing to strangers in her new
dress; she practiced shaking hands gracefully, with her bracelet well in
view. Suddenly she stood still before the glass and became serious and
thoughtful. Kind and dear Mr. Linley was in her mind now. While she was
asking herself anxiously what he would think of her, Kitty--arrayed in
_her_ new finery, as vain and as happy as her governess--drummed with
both fists outside the door, and announced at the top of her voice that
it was time to go downstairs. Sydney’s agitation at the prospect of
meeting the ladies in the drawing-room added a charm of its own to the
flush that her exercises before the glass had left on her face. Shyly
following instead of leading her little companion into the room, she
presented such a charming appearance of youth and beauty that the ladies
paused in their talk to look at her. Some few admired Kitty’s governess
with generous interest; the greater number doubted Mrs. Linley’s
prudence in engaging a girl so very pretty and so very young. Little
by little, Sydney’s manner--simple, modest, shrinking from
observation--pleaded in her favor even with the ladies who had been
prejudiced against her at the outset. When Mrs. Linley presented her
to the guests, the most beautiful woman among them (Mrs. MacEdwin) made
room for her on the sofa, and with perfect tact and kindness set the
stranger at her ease. When the gentlemen came in from the dinner-table,
Sydney was composed enough to admire the brilliant scene, and to wonder
again, as she had wondered already, what Mr. Linley would say to her new
dress.
Mr. Linley certainly did notice her--at a distance.
He looked at her with a momentary fervor of interest and admiration
which made Sydney (so gratefully and so guiltlessly attached to him)
tremble with pleasure; he even stepped forward as if to approach her,
checked himself, and went back again among his guests. Now, in one part
of the room, and now in another, she saw him speaking to them. The one
neglected person whom he never even looked at again, was the poor girl
to whom his approval was the breath of her life. Had she ever felt so
unhappy as she felt now? No, not even at her aunt’s school!
Friendly Mrs. MacEdwin touched her arm. “My dear, you are losing your
pretty color. Are you overcome by the heat? Shall I take you into the
next room?”
Sydney expressed her sincere sense of the lady’s kindness. Her
commonplace excuse was a true excuse--she had a headache; and she asked
leave to retire to her room.
Approaching the door, she found herself face to face with Mr. Linley.
He had just been giving directions to one of the servants, and was
re-entering the drawing-room. She stopped, trembling and cold; but,
in the very intensity of her wretchedness, she found courage enough to
speak to him.
“You seem to avoid me, Mr. Linley,” she began, addressing him with
ceremonious respect, and keeping her eyes on the ground. “I hope--”
she hesitated, and desperately looked at him--“I hope I haven’t done
anything to offend you?”
In her knowledge of him, up to that miserable evening, he constantly
spoke to her with a smile. She had never yet seen him so serious and so
inattentive as he was now. His eyes, wandering round the room, rested
on Mrs. Linley--brilliant and beautiful, and laughing gayly. Why was
he looking at his wife with plain signs of embarrassment in his face?
Sydney piteously persisted in repeating her innocent question: “I hope I
haven’t done anything to offend you?”
He seemed to be still reluctant to notice her--on the one occasion of
all others when she was looking her best! But he answered at last.
“My dear child, it is impossible that you should offend me; you have
misunderstood and mistaken me. Don’t suppose--pray don’t suppose that I
am changed or can ever be changed toward you.”
He emphasized the kind intention which those words revealed by giving
her his hand.
But the next moment he drew back. There was no disguising it, he drew
back as if he wished to get away from her. She noticed that his lips
were firmly closed and his eyebrows knitted in a frown; he looked like
a man who was forcing himself to submit to some hard necessity that he
hated or feared.
Sydney left the room in despair.
He had denied in the plainest and kindest terms that he was changed
toward her. Was that not enough? It was nothing like enough. The facts
were there to speak for themselves: he was an altered man; anxiety,
sorrow, remorse--one or the other seemed to have got possession of him.
Judging by Mrs. Linley’s gayety of manner, his wife could not possibly
have been taken into his confidence.
What did it mean? Oh, the useless, hopeless question! And yet, again and
again she asked herself: what did it mean?
In bewildered wretchedness she lingered on the way to her room, and
stopped at the end of a corridor.
On her right hand, a broad flight of old oak stairs led to the
bed-chambers on the second floor of the house. On her left hand, an
open door showed the stone steps which descended to the terrace and the
garden. The moonlight lay in all its loveliness on the flower-beds
and the grass, and tempted her to pause and admire it. A prospect of
sleepless misery was the one prospect before her that Sydney could see,
if she retired to rest. The cool night air came freshly up the vaulted
tunnel in which the steps were set; the moonlit garden offered its
solace to the girl’s sore heart. No curious women-servants appeared on
the stairs that led to the bed-chambers. No inquisitive eyes could look
at her from the windows of the ground floor--a solitude abandoned to the
curiosity of tourists. Sydney took her hat and cloak from the stand in a
recess at the side of the door, and went into the garden.