FRED HUNTLEY was a man of considerable ingenuity as well as coolness of intellect; and it was impossible that he could remain long unconscious of what he was doing, or take any but the first steps in any path without a clear perception of whither it led. And accordingly, before he had reached this point he had become fully aware of the situation, and had contemplated it from every possible point of view. No feeling of treachery to John weighed upon him when he thought it fully over. He had not been confided in by Kate’s accepted lover, nor appealed to, nor put upon his honour in the matter; and John was not even a very intimate friend that he should give in to him; nor did it occur to him to stifle the dawning love in his own heart, and withdraw from the field, even for Kate’s sake, to leave her tranquil to the enjoyment of her first love. Such an idea was not in Fred’s way. To secure his own will and his own happiness was naturally the first thing in his estimation, and he had no compunctions about his rival. There seemed to him no possible reason why he should sacrifice himself, and leave the field clear to John. And then there were so many aspects in which to consider the matter. It would be much better for her, Fred felt, to marry himself. He could make appropriate settlements upon her; he could maintain her in that position to which she had been accustomed; he could give her everything that a rich man’s daughter or rich man’s wife could desire. His blood, perhaps, might not be so good as John Mitford’s blood, if you entered into so fine a question; but he was heir to his father’s money, if not to much that was more ethereal. And money tells with everybody, Fred thought; it would tell with Kate, though perhaps she did not think so. Of all people in the world was not she the last who could consent to come down from her luxurious state, and be the wife of a poor man, with next to no servants, no horses, no carriage, and nothing but love to make up to her for a thousand wants? Fred Huntley was in love himself, and indeed it was love that was the origin of all these deliberations; and yet he scoffed at love as a compensation. By dint of reasoning, he even got himself to believe that it was an unprincipled thing on John’s part to seek her at all, and that any man would do a good deed who should deliver her from his hands. He had reached to this point by the next evening after the one whose events we have just recorded. Kate had not ridden out that day; she had been little visible to any one, and Fred had not more than a distant glimpse of her at the breakfast-table and in the twilight over the tea, which called together most of the party. Madeline Winton and her mother had gone away that morning; and Madeline was Kate’s gossip, her confidential friend, the only one with whom she could relieve her soul. She was somewhat low-spirited in the evening. Fred looked on, and saw her languid treatment of everything, and the snubs she administered to several would-be consolers. He kept apart with conscious skill; and yet, when he happened to be thrown absolutely in her way, was very full of attention and care for her comfort. He placed her seat just as he thought she liked it, arranged her footstool for her with the most anxious devotion, and was just retiring behind her chair when she stopped him, struck by his melancholy looks. “Are you ill, Mr Huntley?” she said, with something like solicitude; and Fred shook his head, fixing his eyes on her face.
“No,” he said, “I am not ill;” and then drew a little apart, and looked down upon her with a certain pathos in his eyes.
“There is something the matter with you,” said Kate.
“Well, perhaps there is; and I should have said there was something the matter with you, Miss Crediton, which is of a great deal more importance.”
“Mine is easily explained,” said Kate; “I have lost my friend. I am always low when Madeline goes away. We have always been such friends since we were babies. There is nobody in the world I am so intimate with. And it is so nice to have some one you can talk to and say everything that comes into your head. I am always out of spirits when she goes away.”
“If the post is vacant I wish I might apply for it,” Fred said, with exaggerated humility. “I think I should make an excellent confidant. Discreet and patient and ready to sympathise, and not at all given to offering impertinent advice.”
“Ah, you!” cried Kate, with a sudden glance up at him. And then she laughed, notwithstanding her depressed condition. “I wonder what Lady Winton would say?” she added merrily, but the next moment grew very red and felt confused under his eye; for what if he should try to find out what Lady Winton had said?—which, of course, he immediately attempted to do.
“Lady Winton is a great friend of mine. She would never give her vote against me,” said Fred, cunningly disarming his adversary.
Upon which Kate indulged herself in another mischievous laugh. Did he but know! “She is not like you,” said the girl in her temerity; “she is rather fond of giving advice.”
“Yes,” said Fred, growing bold. “That was what she was doing last night. Would you like me to tell you what it was about?”
“What it was about?” cried Kate, in consternation, with a violent sudden blush; but of course it must be nonsense, she represented to herself, looking at him with a certain anxiety. “You never could guess, Mr Huntley; it was something quite between ourselves.”
“That is very possible,” he said, so gravely that her fears were quite silenced; and he added in another moment, “but I know very well what it was. It was about me.”
“About you!”
“I have known Lady Winton a great many years,” said Fred, steadily. “I understand her ways. When she comes and takes a man’s place and sends him off for something she has left behind on purpose, he must be dull indeed if he does not know what she means. She was talking to you of me.”
“It was not I that said so!” cried Kate, who was in a great turmoil, combined of fright, confusion, and amusement. It would be such fun to hear what guesses he would make, and he was so sure not to find it out! “When you assert such a thing you must prove it,” she said, her eyes dancing with fun and rash delight, and yet with a secret terror in them too.
“She was warning you,” said Fred, with a long-drawn breath, in which there was some real and a good deal of counterfeit excitement, “not to trifle with me. She was telling you, that though I did not show many signs of feeling, I was still a man like other men, and had a heart——”
“Fancy Lady Winton saying all that,” cried Kate, with a tremulous laugh of agitation. “What a lively imagination you have—and about you!”
“But she might have said it with great justice,” said Fred, very gravely and steadily, “and about me.”
Here was a situation! To have a man speaking to you in your own drawing-room in full sight of a score of people, and as good as telling you what men tell in all sorts of covert and secret places, with faltering voice and beating heart. Fred was perfectly steady and still; his voice was a trifle graver than usual—perhaps it might have been called sad; his eyes were fixed upon her with a serious, anxious look; there was no air of jest, no levity, but an aspect of fact which terrified and startled her. Kate fairly broke down under this strange and unexpected test. She gave a frightened glance at him, and put up her fan to hide her face. What was she to say?
“Please, Mr Huntley,” she faltered, “this is not the kind of subject to make jokes about.”
“Do I look like a man who is joking?” he asked. “I do not complain; I have not a word to say. I suppose I have brought it upon myself, buying the delight of your society at any price I could get it for—even the dearest. And you talk to me about another man as if I were made of stone—a man who——”
“Stop, please,” she said, faintly. “I may have been wrong. I never thought—but please don’t say anything of him, whatever you may say to me.”
“You are more afraid of a word breathed against him than of breaking my heart,” said Fred, with some real emotion; and Kate sat still, thunderstruck, taking shelter behind her fan, feeling that every one was looking at her, and that her very ears were burning and tingling. Was he making love to her? she asked herself. Had he any intention of contesting John’s supremacy? or was it a mere remonstrance, a complaint that meant nothing, an outcry of wounded pride and nothing more?
“Mr Huntley,” she said, softly, “if I have given you any pain, I am very sorry. I never meant it. You were so kind, I did not think I was doing wrong. Please forgive me; if there is any harm done it is not with my will.”
“Do you think that mends matters?” said Fred, with now a little indignation mingling in his sadness. “If you put it into plain English, this is what it means:—I was something so insignificant to you, taken up as you were with your own love, that it never occurred to you that I might suffer. You never thought of me at all. If you had said you had meant it, and had taken the trouble to make me miserable, that would have been a little better; at least it would not have been contempt.”
And he turned away from her and sat down at a little table near, and covered his face with his hand. What would everybody think? was Kate’s first thought. Did he mean to hold her up to public notice, to demonstrate that she had used him badly? She bore it for a moment or two in her bewilderment, and then stretched across and touched him lightly with her fan. “Mr Huntley, there are a great many people in the room,” she said. “If we were alone you might reproach me; but surely we need not let these people know—and papa! Mr Huntley, you know very well it was not contempt. Won’t you forgive me—when I ask your pardon with all my heart?”
“Forgive you!” cried Fred; and he raised his head and turned to her, though he did not raise his eyes. “You cannot think it is forgiveness that is wanted—that is mockery.”
“Please don’t say so! I would not mock you for all the world. Oh, Mr Huntley, if it is not forgiveness, what is it?” cried Kate.
And then he looked at her with eyes full of reproach, and a certain appeal—while she met his look with incipient tears, with her child’s gaze of wonder, and sorrow, and eloquent deprecation. “Please forgive me!” she said, in a whisper. She even advanced her hand to him by instinct, with a shy half-conscious movement, stopping short out of regard for the many pairs of eyes in the room, not for any other cause. “I am so very, very sorry,” she said, and the water shone in her blue eyes like dew on flowers. Fred, though he was not emotional, was more deeply moved than he had yet been. Throughout all this strange interview, though he meant every word he said, he had yet been more or less playing a part. But now her ingenuous look overcame him. Something of the imbecility of tenderness came into his eyes. He made a little clutch at the finger-tips which had been held out to him, and would have kissed them before everybody, had not Kate given him a warning look, and blushed, and quickly drawn the half-offered hand away. She would not have drawn it away had they been alone. Would she have heard him more patiently, given him a still kinder response? Fred could not tell, but yet he felt that his first effort had not been made in vain.
It was Mr Crediton himself who interrupted this tête-à-tête. He came up to them with a look which might have been mere curiosity, and might have been displeasure. “Kate,” he said, gravely, “it seems to me you are neglecting your guests. Instead of staying in this favourite corner of yours, suppose you go and look after these young ladies a little. Mr Huntley will excuse you, I am sure.”
“I am so lazy, I am out of spirits; and so is Mr Huntley; we have been condoling with each other,” said Kate; but she got up as she spoke, with her usual sweet alacrity, not sorry, if truth were told, to escape. “Keep my seat for me, papa, till I come back,” she said, with her soft little laugh. Mr Crediton did as he was told—he placed himself in her chair, and turned round to Fred and looked at him. While she tripped away to the other girls to resume her interrupted duties, her father and her new lover confronted each other, and cautiously investigated what the new danger was.
“My dear Huntley,” said the elder man, “I am sure your meaning is the most friendly in the world; but my daughter is very young, and she is engaged to be married; and, on the whole, I think it would be better that you did not appropriate her so much. Kate ought to know better, but she is very light-hearted, and fond of being amused.”
“I don’t think I have been very amusing to-night,” said Fred. “Thanks, sir, for your frankness; but I am going away to-morrow, and I may claim a little indulgence, perhaps, for my last night.”
“Going away to-morrow!” said Mr Crediton, with surprise.
“Yes, I have no choice. Shall I say it is sudden business—a telegram from Oxford—a summons home? or shall I tell you the real reason, Mr Crediton?” cried Fred, with emotion. “You have always been very good to me.”
Mr Crediton was startled, notwithstanding his habitual composure. He looked keenly at the young man, and saw what few people had ever seen—the signs of strong and highly-wrought feeling in Fred Huntley’s face; and the sight was a great surprise to him. He had thought the two had been amusing themselves with a flirtation, a thing he did not approve of; but this must surely have gone beyond a flirtation. “If you have anything to say to me, come to the library after they have gone to bed,” he said. Fred answered by a nod of assent, and the two separated without another word. Nor did Kate see the new claimant to her regard any more that night. He had disappeared when she had time to look round her, and recall the agitating interview which had broken the monotony of the evening. It came to her mind when she was talking, returning again and again amid the nothings of ordinary conversation. How strange it all was, how exciting! what a curious episode in the tedious evening! And what did he, what could he, mean? And what would John think? And was it possible that Fred Huntley could feel like that—Fred, that man of the world? She was confused, bewildered, flattered, pleased, and sorry. It was a new sensation, and thrilled her through and through when she was rather in want of something to rouse her up a little. And she was so sorry for him! She almost hoped he would spring up from some corner, and be chidden and comforted, and made more miserable by the soft look of compassion she would give him—the “Pardon me!” which she meant to say; but Fred made no further appearance, and the Pardon me! was not said that night.