Lady Anne Granard/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
The dinner at the Castle was even gayer than usual. The party was small, but so much the better; the circle came more under the immediate influence of the hostess, and no one could be more agreeable than Lady Rotheles when she chose.
The duke, though upwards of sixty, was an agreeable man of the world; and Mary Granard was too young and lovely not to attract a professed admirer of beauty.
Lord Allerton was seated next Miss Aubrey, who gave him sweet words and sweeter looks. Henrietta had seen much of society, and was a lively and pleasant talker; her companion wanted to be amused, and was almost surprised to find conversation so easy. He was, more than he would himself have allowed, under the influence of pique, and this gave its own charm to what ever was the most opposed to Mary Granard. Once he caught sight, as the gold racing-cups were being moved, of Mary's face; it was turned towards the duke with an expression of interest, and a smile the sweeter for its very timidity.
His grace piqued himself on always being able to fascinate; and, hitherto, the silence of his pretty companion had been any thing but nattering to his vanity; but, in one of his many attempts at conversation, he chanced to mention the part of the country in which Granard Park was situated; and Mary could never resist an inquiry about the dear old place. The duke immediately remembered much more than he had observed.
At that moment the gold cups were moved, and Lord Allerton looked towards them. Small things are the hinges on which great events turn! When we trace to their source the most important circumstances of our life, in what trifles have they originated!—a look, a word, are the ministers of fate.
Poor Mary found the dinner very long, but the evening was yet longer; the duke resumed his place at her side, and Lord Allerton took his by Miss Aubrey. Henrietta was looking her best, and was in brilliant spirits, and her companion was surprised to find how much he was entertained.
A still more agreeable surprise awaited him; he was passionately fond of music, and he found that Henrietta sang. Overdone as he had been with singing young ladies, it appeared to him a most astonishing fact, that he could have lived for a week in the house with a girl possessing such an accomplishment, who had not produced it for his especial benefit.
Henrietta was a first-rate musician, and it was extraordinary how their taste coincided; she sang all his favourite songs—they were her favourites also. He was not aware how carefully Lady Rotheles had noted his preference, and that Henrietta had the list by heart.
That night poor Mary sought her pillow with a pale cheek and a tearful eye, and that night was but the herald of many others. His caution aroused, though in the wrong quarter; his vanity flattered, and his evenings amused, Lord Allerton gave in to the snare with a readiness beyond even their most sanguine hopes. A few day's neglect made Mary shrink from even speaking to him—a shyness increased by her mother's reproaches.
As soon as the duke vanished, and gave no sign of being more interested in Miss Granard than in the thousand and one pretty girls that were daily forced upon his notice, Lady Anne referred to Lord Allerton. To her great surprise, she found him completely engrossed with Miss Aubrey, who immediately became with her "that odious and artful girl." Moreover, she declared it was all Mary's fault, and tortured her with perpetual wonder as to what could be the cause.
Mary, diffident of herself to the last degree, could only set it down to Henrietta's superior charms; but bitter within her was the wonder at such change. True, Lord Allerton had not committed himself by a positive declaration; but how often had he conveyed, by a look or by a word, that she was beloved! Mary had been too happy to look forward; for the first time since her poor father's death, she had felt loved and valued. It was so sweet to be cared for—love with her took even a tenderer tone from gratitude.
Mary's was the very nature to put forth all its strength and beauty under the fostering influence of affection—she was a delicate flower that needed sunshine to unfold its brightest colours, and bring forth its sweetest breath. She had been living in a fairy world, which her own heart supplied with poetry. The least selfish of human beings, the advantages of a union with Lord Allerton had never crossed her mind, unless it were to think of how delightful it would be to have her sisters staying with her.
But all this hope and happiness passed away like a dream. With no fault of which she was conscious, no cause which she could even imagine, she saw his attentions suddenly transferred to another. Mary could only remember all she had ever heard of inconstancy, and repeat, night after night, the same exclamation, "I am very unhappy—oh! that I had never seen him!" To yield sadly and submissively seemed all that she could do.
Her rival, Henrietta, would not have yielded so unresistingly; but Henrietta was artful, decided, and selfish. It is a strange thing, but true nevertheless, that a lover is most easily influenced by the woman who does not care for him. She is disturbed by no fears or doubts; fretted by no jealousies, she is ready to flatter, and collected enough to observe when and where the flattery will tell. Having no feelings of her own to control, she is better able to note his, and take her course accordingly.
Henrietta had nothing to interfere with keeping a perpetual watch over Lord Allerton; she had neither timidity nor scruples; and she had that sort of ready talent which makes a capital actress. Nature had meant Henrietta to be something better than society had made her. She had loved—loved with all the intenseness of an impassioned nature. Had that attachment been more fortunate, she would have been a different creature; but her sweetest and best feelings had been excited to gratify the lowest of all vanities, and then neglected as carelessly as they had been called forth. The iron had entered into her soul, and left its own harshness behind. She looked upon marriage in that light which it is as fatal to a woman's delicacy as to her happiness to consider it—merely as an establishment.
Mary's soft eyes, filled with unbidden tears, more than once excited a feeling as like remorse as she was now capable of experiencing; but it was deadened, if not dissipated, by the idea of being mistress of Allerton Park on one hand, and being left still dependant on her worldly aunt, who would visit upon her the failure of their scheme.
"I have been thinking," said Lord Rotheles to his wife, as she came into the library with some letters to be franked, "that Allerton has been trifling with Mary."
"I think," interrupted the countess, "that he is something of a flirt; but if he is trifling with any body, it is with Henrietta."
"Why!" exclaimed Rotheles, "Lady Anne told me"
"Spare me," cried his wife, "the repetition of Lady Anne's sayings. The fact is, her speculation on the duke having failed, Lord Allerton comes in as next desirable, and fancies that if you tell him to marry Miss Granard, he must of course do it. You are master of the house, and can order a husband as easily as a dinner or a drive. You will only make yourself ridiculous by interfering."
"I believe, my dear, that you are right," said his lordship, who was rapidly acquiring the laudable habit of taking his wife's view of any given subject for granted; at all events, it was a process that saved himself a world of trouble.
"There is nothing," continued Lady Rotheles, "for which I have so great a contempt as for this sort of matrimonial manœuvring. Let things take their own course. But you know bow much I dislike interfering in any concerns that are not my own."
Lord Rotheles did not feel quite convinced by this last assertion. The countess left the library, but stopped for a moment's consideration as she passed through the hall. "Delays are dangerous," thought she; "Lord Allerton must make his offer now or never; and unless it be done in a hurry, it will never be done." She then took her way to the music-room, where, as she surmised, she found Henrietta at the piano, and Lord Allerton leaning over her.
"Henrietta," exclaimed she, "do go into my room, and bring me down the little red book; you are the only one I can trust among my papers, and I am too tired to go up stairs." Away went her obedient niece; and Lord Allerton, a little annoyed at the duet being interrupted, stood turning over some loose music. "It is very provoking," said the countess, laughing, "that Rotheles is more often right than I am. He is much more quick-sighted in affairs of the heart. I will not tell you all the handsome things that he has been saying about you. Still, Lord Allerton, you have kept me a little too much in the dark, for Henrietta is to me as if she were a child of my own." Before her marriage, Lady Rotheles would have said, "like a sister."
At this moment Henrietta returned; her aunt immediately left the room, saying, with a meaning smile, as she closed the door, "I see very well that I am de trop; but, Henrietta, you are a sad undutiful girl to let your aunt be the last to find out what every one else in the house knows."
The result of Lady Rotheles's system of non-interference showed itself the following day, when she came into the drawing-room, where Lady Anne was placed at her favourite window, and Mary seated at an embroidery frame, pale, silent, and pursuing her work with a sort of sad, mechanical industry.
"Do you know," said Lady Rotheles, veiling her triumph under an appearance of affectionate interest, "that we shall soon have a wedding here? I really am quite foolish about it, for I am truly fond of Henrietta. Lord Allerton is most fortunate in having secured her affection."
"Miss Aubrey! impossible!" cried Lady Anne; but she had no time to say more, for Mary had sunk insensible beside the embroidery frame.
"How lucky," said Lady Rotheles, afterwards, to her niece, "that Allerton was not by to witness such a well-arranged piece of sensibility!"