“I SHALL have to relinquish my charge of you,” said the young chaperone, for the first time addressing Agnes. Agnes started immediately, and rose.
“It is time for us to go,” she said with eager shyness, “but I did not like. May we follow you? If it would not trouble you, it would be a great kindness, for we know no one here.”
“Why did you come, then?” said the lady. Agnes’s ideas of politeness were sorely tried to-night.
“Indeed,” said the young author, with a sudden blush and courage, “I cannot tell why, unless because Mrs Edgerley asked us; but I am sure it was very foolish, and we will know better another time.”
“Yes, it is always tiresome, unless one knows everybody,” said the pretty young matron, slowly rising, and accepting with a careless grace the arm which somebody offered her. The girls rose hastily to follow. Mr Agar had left them some time before, and even the magnificent guardsman had been drawn away from his sentryship. With a little tremor, looking at nobody, and following very close in the steps of their leader, they glided along through the brilliant groups of the great drawing-room. But, alas! they were not fated to reach the door in unobserved safety. Mr Endicott, though he was improving his opportunities, though he had already fired another letter of introduction at somebody else’s head, and listened to his heart’s content to various snatches of that most brilliant and wise conversation going on everywhere around him, had still kept up a distant and lofty observation of the lady of his love. He hastened forward to them now, as with beating hearts they pursued their way, keeping steadily behind their careless young guide. “You are going?” said Mr Endicott, making a solemn statement of the fact. “It is early; let me see you to your carriage.”
But they were glad to keep close to him a minute afterwards, while they waited for that same carriage, the Islingtonian fly, with Charlie in it, which was slow to recognise its own name when called. Charlie rolled himself out as the vehicle drew up, and came to the door like a man to receive his sisters. A gentleman stood by watching the whole scene with a little amusement—the shy girls, the big brother, the officious American. This was a man of singularly pale complexion, very black hair, and a face over which the skin seemed to be strained so tight that his features were almost ghastly. He was old, but he did not look like his age; and it was impossible to suppose that he ever could have looked young. His smile was not at all a pleasant smile. Though it came upon his face by his own will, he seemed to have no power of putting it off again; and it grew into a faint spasmodic sneer, offensive and repellent. Charlie looked him in the face with a sudden impulse of pugnacity—he looked at Charlie with this bloodless and immovable smile. The lad positively lingered, though his fly “stopped the way,” to bestow another glance upon this remarkable personage, and their eyes met in a full and mutual stare. Whether either person, the old man or the youth, were moved by a thrill of presentiment, we are not able to say; but there was little fear hereafter of any want of mutual recognition. Despite the world of social distinction, age, and power which lay between them, Charlie Atheling looked at Lord Winterbourne, and Lord Winterbourne looked at Charlie. It was their first point of contact; neither of them could read the fierce mutual conflict, the ruin, despair, and disgrace which lay in the future, in that first look of impulsive hostility; but as the great man entered his carriage, and the boy plunged into the fly, their thoughts for the moment were full of each other—so full that neither could understand the sudden distinct recognition of this first touch of fate.
“No; mamma was quite right,” said Agnes; “we cannot be great friends nor very happy with people so different from ourselves.”
And the girls sighed. They were pleased, yet they were disappointed. It was impossible to deny that the reality was as far different from the imagination as anything could be; and really nobody had been in the smallest degree concerned about the author of Hope Hazlewood. Even Marian was compelled to acknowledge that.
“But then,” cried this eager young apologist, “they were not literary people; they were not good judges; they were common people, like what you might see anywhere, though they might be great ladies and fine gentlemen; it was easy to see we were not very great, and they did not understand you.”
“Hush,” said Agnes quickly; “they were rather kind, I think—especially Mr Agar; but they did not care at all for us: and why should they, after all?”
“So it was a failure,” said Charlie. “I say, who was that man—that fellow at the door?”
“Oh, Charlie, you dreadful boy! that was Lord Winterbourne,” cried Marian. “Mr Agar told us who he was.”
“Who’s Mr Agar?” asked Charlie. “And so that’s him—that’s the man that will take the Old Wood Lodge! I wish he would. I knew I owed him something. I’d like to see him try!”
“And Mrs Edgerley is his daughter,” said Agnes. “Is it not strange? And I suppose we shall all be neighbours in the country. But Mr Endicott said quite loud, so that everybody could hear, that papa was a friend of Lord Winterbourne’s. I do not like people to slight us; but I don’t like to deceive them either. There was that gentleman—that Sir Langham. I suppose he thought we were great people, Marian, like the rest of the people there.”
In the darkness Marian pouted, frowned, and laughed within herself. “I don’t think it matters much what Sir Langham thought,” said Marian; for already the young beauty began to feel her “greatness,” and smiled at her own power.