During the next day or two the shooting went on without much interruption from love-making. The love-making was not prosperous all round. Poor Lady Mary had nothing to comfort her. Could she have been allowed to see the letter which her lover had written to her father, the comfort would have been, if not ample, still very great. Mary told herself again and again that she was quite sure of Tregear;--but it was hard upon her that she could not be made certain that her certainty was well grounded. Had she known that Tregear had written, though she had not seen a word of the letter, it would have comforted her. But she heard nothing of the letter.
In June last she had seen him, by chance, for a few minutes, in Lady Mabel's drawing-room. Since that she had not heard from him or of him. That was now more than five months since. How could love serve her,--how could her very life serve her, if things were to go on like that? How was she to bear it? Thinking of this she resolved, she almost resolved, that she would go boldly to her father and desire that she might be given up to her lover.
Her brother, although more triumphant,--for how could he fail to triumph after such words as Isabel had spoken to him,--still felt his difficulties very seriously. She had imbued him with a strong sense of her own firmness, and she had declared that she would go away and leave him altogether if the Duke should be unwilling to receive her. He knew that the Duke would be unwilling. The Duke, who certainly was not handy in those duties of match-making which seemed to have fallen upon him at the death of his wife, showed by a hundred little signs his anxiety that his son and heir should arrange his affairs with Lady Mabel. These signs were manifest to Mary,--were disagreeably manifest to Silverbridge,--and were unfortunately manifest to Lady Mabel herself. They were manifest to Mrs Finn, who was clever enough to perceive that the inclinations of the young heir were turned in another direction.
And gradually they became manifest to Isabel Boncassen. The host himself, as host, was courteous to all his guests. They had been of his own selection, and he did his best to make himself pleasant to them all. But he selected two for his peculiar notice,--and those two were Miss Boncassen and Lady Mabel. While he would himself walk, and talk, and argue after his own particular fashion with the American beauty,--explaining to her matters political and social, till he persuaded her to promise to read his pamphlet upon decimal coinage,--he was always making efforts to throw Silverbridge and Lady Mabel together. The two girls saw it and knew how the matter was,--knew that they were rivals, and knew each the ground on which she herself and on which the other stood. But neither was satisfied with her advantage, or nearly satisfied.
Isabel would not take the prize without the Duke's consent;---and Mabel could not have it without that other consent. 'If you want to marry an English Duke,' she once said to Isabel in that anger which she was unable to restrain, 'there is the Duke himself. I never saw a man so absolutely in love.' 'But I do not want to marry an English Duke,' said Isabel, 'and I pity any girl who has any idea of marriage except that which comes from a wish to give back love for love.'
Through it all the father never suspected the real state of his son's mind. He was too simple to think it possible that the purpose which Silverbridge had declared to him as they walked together from the Beargarden had already been thrown to the winds.
He did not like to ask why the thing was not settled. Young men, he thought, were sometimes shy, and young ladies not always ready to give immediate encouragement. But when he saw them together he concluded that matters were going in the right direction. It was, however, an opinion which he had all to himself.
During the next three or four days which followed the scene in the billiard-room Isabel kept herself out of her lover's way. She had explained to him that which she wished him to do, and she left him to do it. Day by day she watched the circumstances of the life around her, and knew that it had not been done. She was sure that it could not have been done while the Duke was explaining to her the beauty of quints, and expiating on the horrors of twelve pennies, and twelve inches, and twelve ounces,--variegated in some matters by sixteen and fourteen! He could not know that she was ambitious of becoming his daughter-in-law, while he was opening out to her the mysteries of the House of Lords, and explaining how it came to pass that while he was a member of one House of Parliament, his son should be sitting as a member of another;--how it was that a nobleman could be a commoner, and how a peer of one part of the Empire could sit as the representative of a borough in another part. She was an apt scholar. Had there been a question of any other young man marrying her, he would probably have thought that no other young man could have done better.
Silverbridge was discontented with himself. The greater misfortune was that Lady Mabel should be there. While she was present to his father's eyes he did not know how to declare his altered wishes.
Every now and then she would say to him some little word indicating her feelings of the absurdity of his passion. 'I declare I don't know whether it is you or your father that Miss Boncassen most affects,' she said. But to this and to other similar speeches he would make no answer. She had extracted his secret from him at Killancodlem, and might use it against him if she pleased. In his present frame of mind he was not disposed to joke with her on the subject.
