While we were at luncheon, and the swollen champagne-corks were flying upward into the green foliage overhead, and while Owen Gwyllim was supplying us with iced claret-cup from a great silver tankard presented to Sir Madoc's uncle by his regiment, the Ancient Britons, after the Irish rebellion of 1798, and with which he, Sir Madoc, had been wont to dispense swig or "brown Betty" on St. David's day, when at Cambridge--Dora, with her hair flying loose, her eyes sparkling, and her face radiant with excitement and merriment came tripping down the perron from the entrance hall, and across the lawn towards us, with the contents of the household post-bag. She seemed to have letters for every one, save me--letters which she dropped and picked up as she came along. There was quite a pile of notes for herself, on the subject of her approaching fête; and how busy her pretty little hands immediately became!
After the usual muttered apologies, all began to read.
There was a letter for Guilfoyle, on reading which he grew very white, exhibited great trepidation, and thrust it into his coat-pocket.
"What is up, sir?" asked Sir Madoc, pausing with a slice of cold fowl on his fork; "nothing unpleasant, I hope?'
"Sold on a bay mare--that is all," he replied, with an affected laugh, as if to dismiss the subject.
"How?" asked Sir Madoc, whom a "horsey" topic immediately interested.
"Like many other handicap 'pots' this season, my nag came in worse than second."
"A case of jockeying?"
"Pure and simple."
"When?"
"O, ah--York races."
"Why, man alive, they don't come off for a month yet!" responded Sir Madoc, somewhat dryly; but perceiving that his guest was awkwardly placed, he changed the subject by saying, "But your letter, Lady Estelle, gives you pleasure, I am glad to see."
"It is from Lord Pottersleigh. He arrives here to-morrow and hopes his rooms have a southern exposure."
"The fête-day--of course. His comforts shall be fully attended to."
"Why did he write to her about this, and not to Sir Madoc or Miss Lloyd?" thought I.
"He is such an old friend," remarked Lady Estelle, as if she divined my mental query.
"Yes, rather too old for my taste," said the somewhat mischievous Dora. "He wears goloshes in damp weather, his hat down on the nape of his neck; is in an agony of mind about exposures, draughts, and currents of air; makes his horse shy every time he attempts to mount, and they go round in circles, eyeing each other suspiciously till a groom comes; and when he does achieve his saddle, he drops his whip or his gloves, or twists his stirrup-leather. And yet it is this old fogie whose drag at Epsom or the Derby makes the greatest show, has the finest display of lovely faces, fans, bonnets, and parasols--a moving Swan and Edgar, with a luncheon spread that Fortnum and Mason might envy, and champagne flowing as if from a fountain; but withal, he is so tiresome!"
"Dora, you quite forget yourself," said Winifred, while I could have kissed her for this sketch of my rival, at which Sir Madoc, and even Estelle Cressingham, laughed; but Lady Naseby said, with some asperity of tone,
"Lord Pottersleigh is one of our richest peers, Miss Dora, and his creation dates from Henry VIII."
"And he is to dance with me," said the heedless girl, still laughing. "O, won't I astonish his nerves if we waltz!"
"Your cousin Naseby is to visit us, Estelle, at Walcot Park, so soon as we return, if he can," said the Countess, turning from Dora with a very dubious expression of eye, and closing a letter she had received; "his love-affair with that odious Irish girl is quite off, thank heaven!"
"How?--love of change, or change of love?"
"Neither."
"What then, mamma?"
"The Irish girl actually had a mind of her own, and preferred some one else even to a peer, an English peer!"
"I drain this clicquot to the young lady's happiness," said Sir Madoc.
"But all this is nothing to me, mamma," said Lady Estelle, coldly.
But I could see at a glance, that if it was unimportant to her, it was not so to her mother, his aunt, who would rather have had the young earl for her son-in-law than the old viscount, even though the patent of the latter had been expede by the royal Bluebeard, most probably for services that pertained more to knavery than knighthood.
"Well, Caradoc," said I, "is your despatch from the regiment?"
"Yes; from Price of ours. Nothing but rumours of drafts going eastward to make up the death-losses at Varna, and he fears our leave may be cancelled. 'Deuced awkward if we go soon,' he adds, 'as I have a most successful affaire du c[oe]ur on hand just now.'"
"When is he ever without one?" said I; and we both laughed.
Winifred's eyes were on me, and Caradoc's were on her, while I was sedulously attending to Lady Estelle. As for Guilfoyle, since the advent of his letter he had become quite silent. We were at the old game of cross-purposes; for it seems to be in love, as with everything else in life, that the obstacles in the way, and the difficulty of attainment, always enhance the value of the object to be won. Yet in the instance of Lady Estelle I was not so foolish as poor Price of ours, the butt of the mess, who always fell in love with the wrong person--to whom the pale widow, inconsolable in her first crape; the blooming bride, in her clouds of tulle and white lace; the girl just engaged, and who consequently saw but one man in the world, and that man her own fiancé; or any pretty girl whom he met just when the route came and the mess-plate was packed prior to marching--became invested with remarkable charms, and a sudden interest that made his susceptible heart feel sad and tender.
The ladies' letters opened up quite a budget of town news and gossip. To Sir Madoc, a genuine country gentleman, full only of field-sports, the prospects of the turnip crop and the grouse season, the county-pack and so forth, a conversation that now rose, chiefly on the coming fête on dresses, music, routs and Rotten-row, kettledrums and drawing-rooms, and the town in general, proved somewhat of a bore. He fidgeted, and ultimately left for the stables, where he and Bob Spurrit had to hold a grave consultation on certain equine ailments. The ladies also rose to leave us; but Caradoc, Guilfoyle, and I lingered under the cool shadow of the oaks, and lit our cigars. With his silver case for holding the last-named luxuries, Guilfoyle unconsciously pulled forth a letter, which fell on the grass at my feet. Picking it up, I restored it to him; but brief though the action, I could not help perceiving it to be the letter he had just received, that it was addressed in a woman's hand, and had on the envelope, in coloured letters, the name "Georgette."
"Thanks," said he, with sudden irritation of manner, as he thrust it into a breast-pocket this time; "a narrow squeak that!" he added, slangily, with a half-muttered malediction.
I felt certain that there was a mystery in all this; that he feared something unpleasant might have been revealed, had that identical letter fallen into other hands, or under more prying eyes; and I remembered those trivial circumstances at a future, and to me rather harassing, time. I must own that this man was to me a puzzle. With all his disposition to boast, he never spoke of relations or of family; yet he seemed in perfectly easy circumstances; his own valet, groom, and horses were at Craigaderyn; he could bear himself well and with perfect ease in the best society; and it was evident that, wherever they came from, he was at present a man of pretty ample means. He possessed, moreover, a keen perception for appreciating individuals and events at their actual value; his manners were, when he chose, polished, his coolness imperturbable, and his insouciance sometimes amusing. For the present, it had left him.
"Beautiful brilliant that of yours, Mr. Guilfoyle," said Caradoc, to fish for another legend of the ring; but in vain, for Guilfoyle was no longer quite himself, though he had policy enough to feed the snarling cur Tiny in her basket, with choice morsels of cold fowl, as Lady Naseby's soubrette, Mademoiselle Babette, was waiting to carry it away. Since the remarks or contretemps concerning the York races he had been as mute as a fish; and now, when he did begin to speak in the absence of Sir Madoc, I could perceive that gratitude for kindness did not form an ingredient in the strange compound of which his character was made up. Perhaps secret irritation at Sir Madoc's queries about the letter which so evidently disturbed his usual equanimity might have been the real spirit that moved him now to sneer at the old baronet's Welsh foibles, and particularly his weakness on the subject of pedigrees.
"You are to stay here for the 1st, I believe?" said I.
"Yes; but, the dooce! for what? Such a labour to march through miles of beans and growing crop, to knock over a few partridges and rabbits" (partwidges and wabbits, he called them), "which you can pay another to do much better for you."
"Sturdy Sir Madoc would hear this with incredulous astonishment," said I.
"Very probably. Kind fellow old Taffy, though," said he, while smoking leisurely, and lounging back in an easy garden-chair; "has a long pedigree, of course, as we may always remember by the coats-of-arms stuck up all over the house. 'County people' in the days of Howel Dha; 'county ditto' in the days of Queen Victoria, and likely to remain so till the next flood forms a second great epoch in the family history. Very funny, is it not? He reminds me of what we read of Mathew Bramble in Humphry Clinker--a gentleman of great worth and property, descended in a straight line by the female side from Llewellyn, Prince of Wales."
I was full of indignation on hearing my old friend spoken of thus, if not under his own roof, under his ancient ancestral oaks; but Philip Caradoc, more Celtic and fiery by nature, anticipated me by saying sharply, "Bad taste this, surely in you, Mr. Guilfoyle, to sneer thus at our hospitable entertainer; and believe me, sir, that no one treats lightly the pedigree of another who--who--"
"Ah, well--who what?"
"Possesses one himself," added Phil, looking him steadily in the face.
"Bah! I suppose every one has had a grandfather."
"Even you, Mr. Guilfoyle?" continued Caradoc, whose cheek began to flush; but the other replied calmly, and not without point,
"There is a writer who says, that to pride oneself on the nobility of one's ancestors is like looking among the roots for the fruit that should be found on the branches."
Finding that the conversation was taking a decidedly unpleasant turn, and that, though his tone was quiet and his manner suave, a glassy glare shone in the greenish-gray eyes of Guilfoyle, I said, with an assumed laugh,
"We must not forget the inborn ideas and the national sentiments of the Welsh--call them provincialisms if you will. But remember that there are eight hundred thousand people inspired by a nationality so strong, that they will speak only the language of the Cymri; and it is among those chiefly that our regiment has ever been recruited. But if the foibles--I cannot deem them folly--of Sir Madoc are distasteful to you, the charms of the scenery around us and those of our lady friends cannot but be pleasing."
"Granted," said he, coldly; "all are beautiful, even to Miss Dora, who looks so innocent."
"Who is so innocent by nature, Mr. Guilfoyle," said I, in a tone of undisguised sternness.
"Then it is a pity she permits herself to say--sharp things."
"With so much unintentional point, perhaps?"
"Sir!"
"Truth, then--which you will," said I, as we simultaneously rose to leave luncheon-table.
And now, oddly enough, followed by Winifred, Dora herself came again tripping down the broad steps of the perron towards us, exclaiming,
"Is not papa with you?--the tiresome old dear, he will be among the harriers or the stables of course!"
"What is the matter?" I asked.
"Only think, Mr. Hardinge, that poor woman we saw at church this morning, looking so pretty, so pale, and interesting, was found among the tombstones by Farmer Rhuddlan, quite in a helpless faint, after we drove away--so the housekeeper tells me; so we must find her out and succour her if possible."
"But who is she?" asked Caradoc.
"No one knows; she refused obstinately to give her name or tell her story ere she went away; but at her neck hangs a gold locket, with a crest, the date, 1st of September, on one side, and H. G. beautifully enamelled on the other. How odd--your initials, Mr. Guilfoyle!"
"You are perhaps not aware that my name is Henry Hawkesby Guilfoyle," said he, with ill-concealed anger, while he played nervously with his diamond ring.
"How intensely odd!" resumed his beautiful but unwitting tormentor; "H. H. G. were the three letters on the locket!"
"Did no one open it?" he asked.
"No; it was firmly closed."
"By a secret spring, no doubt."
Guilfoyle looked ghastly for a moment, or it might have been the effect of the sunlight flashing on his face through the waving foliage of the trees overhead; but he said laughingly,
"A droll coincidence, which under some circumstances, might be very romantic, but fortunately in the present has no point whatever. If my initials hung at your neck instead of hers, how happy I should be, Miss Dora!"
And turning the matter thus, by a somewhat clumsy compliment or bit of flattery, he ended an unpleasant conversation by entering the house with her and Caradoc.
Winifred remained irresolutely behind them.
"We were to visit my future comrade," said I.
"Come, then," said she, with a beautiful smile, and a soft blush of innocent pleasure.
