INVESTMENTS.
It was seldom that Robert Streightley allowed himself the luxury of
thought. He was so much in the habit of deciding, after a rapid
business calculation, upon any thing that was submitted to him, of
accepting or rejecting the proposition at once, that he scarcely knew
what it was to ponder, and weigh, and calculate chances. In his
business he had never, apparently, had occasion to calculate them. The
knowledge which guided him seemed to come to him intuitively, and
hitherto had scarcely ever failed in producing a good result. But in
these recent days he had proposed to himself a venture such as he had
never previously contemplated, a risk which was a risk indeed, a prize
for which he should have to enter against sharp competition, and
which, even if he gained it, he yet felt would be uncertain and
difficult to deal with. It was a troublous time for this honest,
straightforward, simple man of business, who for the first time in his
life found himself possessed by a mania over which he had not the
least control; this long-headed, cool, calculating fellow, who was
accustomed to look far ahead, and see clearly what would be the end of
any step he proposed to take before he took it, and who now found
himself irresistibly impelled to rush blindly on, ignoring
consequences, content to leave all to Fate, and to console himself
with the victory of the moment. Never before during his career had he
felt the smallest pang of jealousy; never before, when bidding for
great contracts, involving such an amount of capital as made the
boldest hesitate before speculating, had he, after a few minutes'
rapid calculation, wavered for an instant. But the present case was
different: it was "the house" then; it was "the heart" now. Luck,
carefully steered by prudence and by foresight, and acumen more than
prudence, had brought his ventures safely riding over the billows, and
through the shoals and shallows; would it do so now?
He was desperately in love with this girl--this bright, brilliant,
haughty, wilful girl. Even in all the mad fervour of his passion he
allowed to himself that she was haughty and wilful, and he loved her
all the morel--loved her with a depth and earnestness, with a wild
passionate longing such as he had never believed he could have felt.
Haughty and wilful! were not these very qualities great ingredients in
her charm? Had he not for nearly forty years been living with the tame
and commonplace women among whom his lot had been cast, and had any of
them ever had the slightest influence over him? had they ever caused
his heart one extra vibration--his pulse one extra throb? Why should
he not enter the lists and tilt amongst the others for the hand of
this Queen of Beauty, who sat smiling so superciliously in the
balcony? It was an open course, and he brought amongst his attributes
a stout heart and a willing hand to the encounter. In curvettings and
caracoles, and all the dainty manoeuvres of the _manège_, in courtly
skill and trick of fence, there might be his superiors; but when the
issue of the combat came to sheer hard fighting, where courage and
persistency won the day, he would give way to none. And, carelessly
fluttering over the leaves of his ledger, as in his dim City office he
revolved all these thoughts within his mind, he felt--not without a
blush of shame--that he had secured the services of a most potent ally
within the citadel. In these portentous leaves the name of Edward
Guyon, Esquire, of Queen-Anne Street, now had a small space reserved
to itself, the details covering which, though insignificant in such a
business as that of Streightley and Son, were multiplied amazingly
since the first "transaction" which had brought the siren to the abode
of Plutus. Over Robert Streightley Mr. Guyon had obtained an
extraordinary influence; due, let it be stated, of course to a certain
extent to the young merchant's infatuation, but also in a great degree
to his own admirable tact. During the course of a life passed in
business Robert had seen many specimens of _tracasserie_ and humbug,
which his good nurse had enabled him to estimate at their real value;
but he had never been brought in contact with any of their professors
who had, or seemed to have, the real charm of social influence. In Mr.
Guyon's society--and of late he had been admitted into a great deal of
Mr. Guyon's society--Robert Streightley seemed to feel himself a
different being. There was nothing rough or unpleasant in his new
friend and those to whom his new friend introduced him; he became for
the first time in his life aware of the existence of another world,
where well-bred ease, polished manners, and refined conversation
were substituted for that eternal strife and fight and wrangle for
money-getting in which his whole previous existence had been passed.
And she--Katharine--his adoration--she was of this world, and yet not
of it so much as she might be; held not that queenly position in it
which she might hold, were circumstances different. It would have
taken a mind much less acute than Robert Streightley's to perceive at
once the influence which the possession of wealth had among those who
affected to despise it. In an instant he saw--few so rapidly--how many
of the new society into which he had been introduced, while merely
electro-plated and veneered, were endeavouring to pass themselves off
as the genuine article; and he ascribed, correctly enough, the sneers
at money, in which most members of the society indulged, to their lack
of it. Why should he not be the means of giving her the position which
she would so thoroughly adorn? She looked a duchess; why should he not
give her the power of gratifying the tastes of a duchess? Robert
Streightley, constantly engaged in the accumulation of money, had
given very little thought to the amount that he had accumulated.
Confident in the security of his investments, he left the heap to
gather in rolling; his simple life and the even more simple life led
by his mother and sister in the Brixton villa were provided for at a
comparatively infinitesimal cost; and of the bulk of his possessions
he had taken little heed, knowing that it was there "to the good." But
recently, within the last few days, he had looked through his
accounts, and found that he was the possessor of what would be
considered, even in "the City," to be a large fortune. Money he had in
funds, and stocks, and securities of all kinds; money in ships bound
on antipodean voyages, and in semi-cleared Canadian forests; money in
loans to Egyptian viceroys and Nicaraguan republics; money in an
English estate, "all that house and estate known as 'Middlemeads,'
in the county of Bucks, with five hundred acres of parklike land,
well-preserved coverts, lake with fishing-temple, large stabling,
forcing-houses, hothouses, orangery, delightfully situate on the brow
of Holcomb Hill, with the silver Thames winding in the distance," as
it was described in the auctioneer's advertisement. The auctioneer,
whose descriptive powers are here recorded, had not the opportunity of
bringing this "lot" to the hammer; for finding the previous bidding
dull, Robert Streightley, to whom the estate had reverted on the
foreclosure of a mortgage which he held upon it, determined to
withdraw it from public competition, wisely thinking that he could
sell it a better bargain to some private purchaser. When the bold idea
of asking for Miss Guyon's hand first entered his head, the
recollection of this property flashed upon him at once. He had never
seen the place, but he knew from his agent that it was essentially a
gentleman's house, and that the entire estate was large, productive,
and one of which any one might be proud. "Mrs. Streightley of
Middlemeads;" "Middlemeads, August;" "Mrs. R. Streightley
presents"--Robert Streightley found himself sketching these words on
his blotting-pad as these thoughts passed through his mind; and though
he gave a short laugh of semi-contempt at the wildness of his fancy,
the idea had so far possessed him, that he wrote off to his old
friend and legal adviser Charles Yeldham, begging him to be at the
Great-Western station at a given hour on the next morning, and go with
him to see a place down the line which he had purchased as an
investment.
At the appointed time Mr. Streightley walked on to the platform, and
found his friend already awaiting him. Mr. Charles Yeldham was indeed
instantly recognisable. In all the crowd of pushing anxious passengers
he stood perfectly calm and self-possessed, heeding neither the
porters wheeling heavy barrows, who shouted to him "By your leave!"
and charged straight at him with the obvious intention of grinding him
to powder; the grooms, vainly endeavouring to hold their braces of
pointers, which invariably came to grief through disinclination to go
the same side of the columns supporting the roof; the helpless female,
or the excited male passengers. There were men in every variety of
travelling-dress, in wide-awakes, and pork-pie hats, and cloth caps,
and fezzes; in suits of dittoes in every conceivable variety of check,
in knickerbockers and gaiters, in tightly-fitting 'horsy' trousers,
and wearing couriers' bags or slung race-glasses. But among them
placidly walked Charles Yeldham, in his broadish-brimmed chimney-pot,
his high-buttoning black waistcoat, his Oxford-mixture trousers very
baggy at the knees, and his Wellington boots--among them, but not of
them--with a pleasant smile on his cheery face, and with his head full
of the case of Marshland _versus_ the Bagglehole Improvement Company,
the pleadings in which he had to draw. But he saw Streightley at once,
and as he caught sight of him he again noticed the change in his
friend's style of dress, which he had not thought of since their
meeting at the Botanical Gardens, and laughed quietly to himself.
"This is good, Yeldham; I knew you would come," said Streightley, as
the train moved out of the station. "You're just the man I want for a
sound practical opinion."
"On an estate which you've bought, Robert? Yes; my knowledge of the
value of land, derived from occasionally looking out on to and running
round the Temple Gardens; the quick eye with which, from constant
practice, I shall be able to detect any shortcomings in the building,
and suggest improvements; my general acquaintance with farming-stock
and agricultural produce, will enable me to give you some very
valuable advice."
"You're laughing at me, old friend; but it don't much matter; and I
know of old that you always will have your joke. No; it was not
exactly on these points that I wanted to consult you,--in fact,
not at all upon them. With all your pretended ignorance, you are a
country-bred man, and one able to give a thoroughly practical opinion
on the value of Middlemeads and its capabilities; and moreover, by
this means I get you out quietly into the air and away from these
stivy chambers, and have the opportunity of a long quiet talk with you
about--about any subject that may turn up, without the risk of your
being worried by perpetual visits of attorneys' clerks, or the
annoyance of seeing you constantly fidgetting to get to your desk
again and get to work at something else."
"O ho, Master Robert! then this is a trap, is it? a kind of perforce
holiday into which you have led me?"
"Not at all. Wait until the day is over, until I've said all I've got
to say, and you've heard it, before you complain. And even if it
were--supposing it were a holiday, you don't take so many of them that
you need grudge yourself this outing."
"So far as that goes we're both in the same boat, I think; but I have
had a holiday, and only a couple of days ago, when I was at the
Botanical--Why, by Jove! you were there too."
"Of course I was. That _is_ good! our each giving the other credit for
constant industry, and then recollecting that we had lapsed into
idleness together. By the way, that Mr. Frere--who lives with you,
doesn't he?--what sort of fellow is he?"
"A capital fellow," said honest old Charley Yeldham; "a good deal
younger than we are, you know, Robert, and consequently more
impulsive, and what he would call 'gushing'--and yet older in some
respects too; older in cynicism and so-called knowledge of life,
and--; but a very good fellow, a capital youngster. I've known him
since he was a boy. He was a pupil of my father's."
"O, indeed! Has he--has he been very long intimate with Mr. Guyon's
family, do you know?"
"No, not very long, I should say. By the way, I did not know until I
met you with him that you knew Mr. Guyon, Robert."
"Didn't you? Q yes; a business acquaintance of mine."
"Business acquaintance? Hem! I can understand Mr. Guyon's popularity
from a social point of view, but in matters of business I confess I
think that----"
"Don't you fear, dear old Charley; I know all about that; and--and
does Frere go often to the Guyons'?"
"N-no; not very often, I think. He's been once or twice lately; but
he's not likely to see much more of them this season, as he's gone out
of town--down to his father's--on a matter of business. What do you
think of Miss Guyon?"
"She is very handsome--at least I suppose so; I'm not much of a judge
in those matters. And how are we getting on with Hamilton's action?"
Upon which question the gentlemen plunged into a conversation full of
business details, which occupied them until they arrived at their
station, where alighting, they hired a trap and drove over to
Middlemeads.
Passing through a little village, and turning sharply to the right
after sighting the old church, they came upon a quaint one-storied
stone lodge. Standing out from the ivy, in which it otherwise was
buried, stood a sculptured knight in fall armour treading on a
serpent, the well-known crest of the Chevers of Middlemeads, the
glorious old family whose ancestral seat had passed to strangers, and
whose last scion was now dwelling in a little cottage at Capécure near
Boulogne. A few short words of explanation to the old portress gained
them admission, and they entered a long drive leading through groves
of noble trees and over undulating ground--where the deer, half hidden
in the deep fern, were quietly feeding--to the house. Then under the
principal gateway with its long range of gables and unrelieved wall,
through the double arch in the first court, which was carpeted with
greensward, to the second or paved court, fronted with its pure Ionic
colonnade, where the old housekeeper, already apprised of their
coming, was in readiness to receive them. Charles Yeldham's heart,
albeit somewhat incrusted with legal formulæ and a long course of Doe
and Roe, yet filled with reverence for antiquity and appreciation of
architectural beauty, thrilled within him as, preceded by the old
housekeeper, they walked through the great hall, now denuded of its
glorious family pictures, its Holbeins and Lelys, its Jansens and
Knellers, its grand Vandyke, its "Animals reposing" by Snyders, and
its "Riding-party" by Wouvermans--all long since dispersed at the
hands of Christie and Manson, but still retaining its fireplace with
the ornamental fire-dogs bearing the arms and initials H. A. of Henry
VIII. and Anne Boleyn, royal guests of the Chevers in the good old
days. Through the Brown Gallery and Lady Betty Chiddingstone's
chamber, through the Spangled Bedroom, and the King's Room, where
James I. had passed a night, through the Organ Room, where still stood
the ancient instrument which had been used for divine service in
connection with the adjoining chapel, long since dismantled and half
in ruins, they passed; and in each the old cicerone poured forth her
oft-told tale of byegone glories.
While in each of these rooms, Yeldham indulged in retrospect, peopling
them according to his fancy with those who might have inhabited them,
picturing to himself how the stately lords and ladies lived and moved
and had their being; and smiled half-cynically to himself in the
thought that, other differences allowed, they were doubtless swayed by
the same passions, victims of the same hopes and fears and doubts,
moved by the same temptations, and acted on by the same impulses as we
of these degenerate days. He was surprised to find that his companion
was going through the house in the most practical manner, apportioning
the rooms one by one to their several purposes, deciding upon the
Brown Gallery for a drawing-room, the King's Chamber for the principal
bedroom, planning the furniture and fittings for the great hall, and
altogether comporting himself as though he were the head of a large
family come down to make the necessary arrangements for its immediate
induction. This notion struck him at first comically, but when he saw
it persevered in in every detail, he began to think more seriously of
it; and after they had left the house, and were again in the trap
driving back to the station, he turned to his friend and said,
"Why, Robert, what on earth is in your head now? I've been perfectly
astonished in watching you ever since we entered Middlemeads."
"Have you? In what way have I excited your astonishment? Did I swagger
too much about my purchase? did I what they call 'gush' about my
place?"
"Not a bit; and if you had, there would have been every excuse for
you. A more delightful old house and more perfect grounds never were
seen."
"Well, then, what did I do?"
"Well, it seemed to me that you didn't regard the place from a
bachelor point of view. You were planning drawing-rooms, and bedrooms,
and dining-halls, and----"
"You know that my mother and sister form part of my belongings?"
"Ye-es; but I didn't hear any mention of your mother and sister,
and----"
"Speak plainly, Charley, and say that you think I contemplate
matrimony."
"And suppose I were to say so?"
"Suppose you were? Well, then, all I could say would be--that I felt
myself a sneak for not having owned the fact before to you, my dear
old friend. But in any thing out of my regular routine of business I'm
as shy as a great schoolgirl; and I could not bring myself to tell
even you about it."
"Then it's a case, Robert. A case at last with you, of all men in the
world. I feel now that even I myself am not impregnable, after 'Bob
Sobersides' has surrendered at discretion."
"Chat away, old fellow. I've no reply to make, save that the opposing
force was irresistible--as I think you'll allow."
"My dear Streightley, I hope I'm a true friend, but I don't think you
could have a worse confidant in an affair of this kind, so far as
giving any opinion on an unknown young lady is concerned----"
"But suppose the young lady is not unknown to you?"
"Not unknown to me! Well, that alters the case of course. But, God
bless my soul, who can--who can have won your love in this sudden way,
Robert? You're not a man of impulse; you're accustomed to think
deeply, and weigh and balance before committing yourself--you would
not do any thing rash. Who on earth can it be?"
"I'm a bad hand at concealing any thing of this sort," said
Streightley with a half-rueful smile. "Indeed, I think I must seem
awkward about the whole business; but the truth of it is, old
friend--I'm madly in love with Miss Guyon, and I hope to make her my
wife."
"Miss Guyon?"
"Ay, Miss Guyon. It has not been a long acquaintance, I know; but I
believe those things never are--I mean that--you know what I mean. But
you know her; at least you've seen her, and--that must be my excuse
for the rashness, and the folly, and whatever the world chooses to
call it. For she is very lovely, isn't she, Charley?"
"Very lovely, indeed!" said Yeldham.
And then, as though by a tacit understanding, both men leaned back in
the carriage, and delivered themselves up to their own reflections.
Needless to say what were Robert Streightley's. Vague desires to call
up well-remembered expressions of Katharine's faze, which yet refused
to be recalled at the moment; dim distrusts and doubts of his own
chance of winning her hand; soul-disturbing thoughts of her friendship
with Gordon Frere; wild plots of laying Mr. Guyon under even greater
obligations to him, and thus making sure of his alliance and support;
dreamy reminiscences of how she had looked and moved, and what she had
done and said on the several occasions when he had seen her.
Charles Yeldham's thoughts were of a very different kind. Here was
this simple girl, of whose existence he had scarcely known a few days
ago, now exercising influence over the future fate of three--no, of
two men: as for himself--bah! the chambers and the pleadings, the hard
work which was to make up little Clare's dowry,--that was his fate,
and there was an end of it so far as he was concerned. But Gordon?
Poor Gordon, who had gone off full of life and hope to urge upon his
father the necessity of "doing something for him," actuated thereto
solely by the hope of propitiating Mr. Guyon by being able to show
himself in a position to ask for Katharine's hand; poor Gordon, who
was at that moment doubtless promising and vowing all sorts of things
in his own name to his father, and who, if he succeeded in getting
promise of an appointment, would write off triumphantly in prosecution
of his suit, or who, if he failed, would come back to town and try and
pursue it without the necessary qualification, but who in either case
would have a cold shoulder turned upon him and the door shut in his
face so soon as a suitor of Streightley's calibre was known to have
entered the lists. "I hope to make her my wife." Those were Robert
Streightley's words; and from them Yeldham could not gather whether or
not the final question had been asked; but be that as it might, he
knew sufficiently of Mr. Guyon to feel certain that Gordon's hopes
were destined to suffer utter wreck. Would not the girl herself
be true to the--to the what? What could this poor lad adduce in
support of the flame which he had nourished but the ordinary
flirtation-phrases indulged in night after night in hundreds of London
ball-rooms? How could he (Yeldham) tell whether Katharine loved Gordon
or not? He had no clearer indication than the readiness of a joyous,
enthusiastic, rather trivial nature to believe in the existence of
what it hoped and desired; he shrunk from the idea of the lad's
disappointment, but, after all, he knew Gordon Frere too well to
suppose that he would be unlike the remainder of mankind, that he
would not get over it in time--in perhaps no very long time. Had it
been himself now,--had he loved Katharine Guyon and another came to
win her from him by his superior wealth--but he would not pursue so
futile a thought as that,--he had nothing to do with love. Hard work,
and not the indulgence of fancy, was his lot; and he was content. He
wished it was over though, and that Gordon knew the worst.
These and many other thoughts resembling them chased each other
through Yeldham's brain, and rendered it difficult to him to keep up
even the desultory conversation for which only Streightley was
disposed. The friends parted at the railway station, and Yeldham
betook himself at once to his chambers. It was a still, hot evening,
and the airlessness of the rooms oppressed him. He was a man little
influenced by such things ordinarily; yet this evening the grim
cheerlessness, the dust, the ungentle disarray, in whose
disorderliness there was a kind of order, of which he held the key;
the harsh bundles of papers, the very fittings of the rooms, in which
all was scrupulously designed for use, and as devoid of ornament as
only true British business upholstery knows how to be,--all these
things made themselves suddenly apparent. He revolted against them,
against his life in general. It suddenly seemed alike hard and
useless: what was he grinding away like this for? supposing his object
accomplished, _cui bono?_ An unwholesome frame of mind to be betrayed
into, even for a little while--a relaxation, a renunciation of the
great principle of duty which had upheld and guided him so long; and
Charles Yeldham knew that it was so, and felt afraid of himself. He
shrank from the first insidious chill of the advancing tide of
discontent; he recognised the deadliness of it.
"Yes, that's it," he said thoughtfully, when, having emptied his
letter-box, and looked over the memoranda left for his inspection by
his clerk, he sat moodily by the open window, through which faint
sounds from the river reached his ears: "Yes, that's it. I have seen a
fine place to-day, and talked with a rich man--a man who hardly knows
how rich he really is, I fancy--about what he is to do with his money;
and I suppose I am actually envious, cut up by the sight of something
desirable that never can be mine. He is going to invest in happiness,
is he?--to buy a beautiful idol, and set her up in a splendid shrine?
he's rich enough to do it, if he likes. I wonder how it is really. I
wonder whether he will be as happy as he believes. But no--I don't
wonder any thing of the kind, of course; no one ever was or will be,
since life is limited, and faith is infinite. It's a dull business, I
fancy, even at the best--as dull perhaps as it is to me, who am so
very far off the best."
And then Charles Yeldham rose, shook off the unusual and perilous mood
which had held him already too long, and sat down resolutely to his
work. It was very late that night when he went to bed; and sleep kept
away from him in a harassing manner. The events of the day reproduced
themselves in his thoughts, which escaped his control, and dragged him
in their course. The strange imbroglio in which he found himself
engaged; the clashing interests of two friends, in whom he was greatly
though not equally interested; the certain crash of the hopes and
projects of one of them; his uncertainty of the extent to which
Streightley had received encouragement, but which his knowledge of
Robert's real diffidence of character and unconsciousness of his own
value in the eyes of a scheming and mercenary society, induced him to
believe must have been considerable; his doubts as to the course he
ought to pursue towards Gordon;--no wonder he could not sleep while
these conflicting thoughts battled with each other in his mind.
The practical result of his cogitations was, that Charles Yeldham
decided on postponing any communication with Frere until his return.
Gordon was not likely to write to him--he hated letter-writing rather
more than he hated any other kind of mental exertion; and whether his
application to his father might have good results or not, he would no
doubt return without delay. On the other perplexing question--had
Streightley proposed to Miss Guyon?--Yeldham ardently desired
information; but for the present there was no means of attaining it
within his reach. He must wait like the others--only not like them in
this, that he did not wait and hope. He was only an outsider, an
inconsiderable person, the recipient of half-confidence on one side,
the confidant of baseless hopes, as he feared, upon the other; while
to one principally concerned he was nothing. No conjuncture of affairs
could make him an object of importance in the life of the proud
beautiful girl, whose fair face came between him and every thing on
which he strove to fix his attention; the only woman's face which had
ever charmed Charles Yeldham.
Hester Gould had seen a good deal of her friends at Hampstead since
the evening on which she had made so favourable an impression on Mr.
Daniel Thacker. She had accompanied her dear Rachel and Rebecca to the
Botanical promenade, whither they had repaired arrayed in much
splendour, and with the gorgeousness of colouring and richness of
material affected by their nation. Mr. Thacker had joined the party,
and had exerted himself to the utmost to be agreeable to Miss Gould,
whom he admired more than ever, when he contrasted the taste and
propriety of her dress with the splendid array of his sisters, from
which he shrunk with dismay. As it suited Hester's plans for obtaining
information that Daniel Thacker should succeed in these efforts, he
did succeed, and she had enjoyed an opportunity of observing Miss
Guyon closely and attentively, during her animated conversation with
Gordon Frere, and also during her father's _empressé_ introduction of
Streightley to her notice. She had decided, with characteristic
readiness, on entering the grounds, that she would tell Thacker that
she wished to see Miss Guyon; and she had done so. Mr. Thacker had
entertained a distinct purpose of business, in addition to that of
pleasure, in coming to the _fête_; and it was a source of
conscientious gratification to him that he found himself enabled to
serve both. He had been informed by Mr. Guyon that Streightley would
be there, and he resolved to see for himself how that gentleman stood
with Miss Guyon. Thus he and Hester were each bent upon a similar
object. There was, however, one material difference between their
modes of pursuing it. Mr. Thacker did not begin to watch Katharine
until Streightley joined her. Hester Gould watched her from the first
moment she distinguished her figure amid the gay group, which was one
of the most conspicuous in the gardens. She watched her, not with the
jealous gaze of an angry woman watching a dangerous rival, but with
unclouded, unprejudiced senses, with close admiring attention, and the
keen perception of a woman gifted with intuitive knowledge of the
world, a cool temper, and unusual discretion. She had seen expectation
and pleasure in every line of Miss Guyon's expressive face, as Gordon
joined her; she had marked the heightened colour, the brightened eye,
as they passed and repassed each other; she had heard the note of
irrepressible gladness in the sweet musical voice; and Hester Gould
knew that Katharine Guyon loved the fair-haired young man, in whose
air and figure she recognised the ease and self-possession, the
simplicity and frankness, which made Gordon so attractive, as well as
the girl who was giving herself up to all the unrestrained happiness
of young love knew it. Hester did not ask her companion who Gordon
Frere was; she did not attract his attention to the young gentleman at
all; on the contrary, she engrossed it so completely, that when she
said quietly, "There is Ellen Streightley's brother talking to your
friend's daughter now, Mr. Thacker," Daniel looked round with a start,
and felt that he had almost forgotten the business part of his
purpose.
A bow of recognition had passed between Mr. Guyon and Mr. Daniel
Thacker, but Robert Streightley had not seen Miss Gould. It had not
been her intention that he should see her; her purpose was to observe
him closely, and she had effected it. She was no more mistaken in her
estimate of his sentiments than in that of Katharine's; and it vas
characteristic of her that, though her observations changed a vague
surmise into a positive certainty, a threatening risk into a certain
present danger, she betrayed not a sign of uneasiness or
discouragement. Neither her colour nor her countenance changed, though
she saw before her eyes the overthrow of a scheme cherished long and
deeply--though she could only calculate the chances in her favour by a
vague speculation on the possible fortune and position of the young
man she had seen with Katharine; or, supposing he had neither, on
Katharine's strength of determination in opposition to her father. It
was also characteristic of Hester Gould that, though she had
determined to marry Streightley without permitting herself to love
him, she told herself that night that she felt a degree of dislike to
Katharine Guyon, which might, if she did not take care, grow into
hatred.
"She is my unconscious and involuntary rival," said the strange woman,
whose candour towards herself was never laid aside, "and I must not
hate her; for hatred is troublesome--a passion--and I will never put
myself under the tyranny of a passion."
Hester Gould was at the Brixton Villa when Robert returned from his
visit to Middlemeads. Mrs. Streightley and his sister were aware that
he had gone into the country, but they knew no more. When he examined
the letters sent by his orders from the City, he found among them one
from Mr. Guyon, requesting him, if possible, to call on him on the
following day, leaving the hour to his selection, but urging his
attention to the request. The letter was a dainty missive, with a fine
coloured monogram on the seal, and expressing in its appearance as
wide a difference between itself and Robert's ordinary correspondence
as it was in the power of stationery to convey. Ellen Streightley was
one of those young ladies blessed with a taste for simple pleasures,
and who rated the possession of crests and monograms very high among
them. Accordingly she exclaimed,
"O Robert, that's something in my line. Do let me have it!"
He handed her the envelope.
"O, how delightfully intricate! I can't make it out. What are the
letters, Robert? Whose name is it?"
"The letters are K.S.G.," said Robert, rather reluctantly.
Hester watched him closely: "O, that's it, is it? but what is the
name?"
"Katharine Sibylla Guyon," replied Robert; and still Hester watched
his embarrassment. "But the note is from Mr. Guyon--he wants to see
me. I suppose he wrote it at his daughter's desk."
Ellen perceived nothing of her brother's embarrassment, and went on:
"Robert, you never saw Hester the other day at the Botanical Fête, but
she saw you; and you were talking to such a beautiful girl; she says
she is sure it was Miss Guyon,--was it?"
"Yes," returned her brother, "that was Miss Guyon; it must have been,
for I did not know any other lady who was there. I am sorry I did not
see you, Miss Gould. Did you enjoy the _fête_?"
"Very much indeed," said Hester. "I was particularly struck with Miss
Guyon. She seems to be very much admired. I saw a gentleman with her
before you arrived,--a very young man with fair hair, very handsome.
He seemed completely captivated, I thought. You must excuse my talking
such nonsense, ma'am; but I really was amused looking at them. Do you
know who he is, Mr. Streightley?"
"I fancy from your description the gentleman in question is a Mr.
Gordon Frere," Robert answered in a formal tone, whose bitterness and
displeasure Hester Gould did not fail to recognise. She turned the
conversation at once, and took her leave early, having received all
Ellen's confidences before Robert's return, and having duly admired
the mingled piety and sentiment of the Reverend Decimus Dutton's
latest letter.
Ellen retired immediately after Hester's departure, and was soon fast
asleep, with a neat packet of the missionary's love-letters under her
pillow, and a locket containing a photographic likeness of that
apostle, which might have taken a prize for feebleness, resting upon
her innocent breast.
Robert Streightley sat up late with his mother, and told her of his
visit to Middlemeads, his purposes respecting the estate, and the
hopes which had led to their formation.