Mildred Arkell Volume Iii Part 33

"I shall never have my home with you," she said, in the same low whisper. "Nothing should induce me to it."

"But, Lucy----"

"I will not hear you. You have no right so to speak to me. Aunt!

aunt!"--and the tears gushed forth in all their bitter anguish--"let me find a home with you!"

Mildred turned and clasped fondly the appealing form as it approached her. Travice, hurt and resentful, quitted the room.

The death came, and then the funeral. A day or two afterwards, Mrs.

Arkell condescended to pay a stately visit of ceremony to Mildred, who received her in the formerly almost-unused drawing-room. Lucy did not appear. Miss Arkell, her heart softened by grief, by much trial, was more cordial than perhaps she had ever been to Mrs. Arkell, before her marriage or after it.

"What a fine young man Travice is!" she observed, in a pause of their conversation.

"The finest in Westerbury," said Mrs. Arkell, with all the partiality of a mother. "I expect he will be thinking of getting married shortly."

"Of getting married! Travice! To whom? To Lucy?"

The question had broken from her in her surprise, in a.s.sociation with an idea that had for long and long floated through her brain--that Travice and Lucy were attached to each other. Mildred knew not whence it had its origin, unless it was in the frequent mention of Travice in Lucy's letters. Mrs. Arkell heard, and tossed her head indignantly.

"I beg your pardon, Miss Arkell--to _Lucy_, did you say? Travice would scarcely think of wedding a portionless bride, under present circ.u.mstances. You must have heard of the rich Fauntleroy girls? It is one of them."

Mildred--calm, composed, quiet Mildred--could very nearly have boxed her own ears. Never, perhaps, had she been more vexed with herself--never said an inadvertent thing that she so much wished recalled. How entirely Lucy was despised, Mrs. Arkell's manner and words proclaimed; and the fact carried its sting to Mildred's heart.

"I had no reason to put the question," she said, only caring how she could mend the matter; "I dare say Lucy would not thank me for the idea.

Indeed, I should fancy her hopes may lie in quite a different direction.

Young Palmer, the lawyer, the son of her father's old friend, has been here several times this past week, inquiring after our health. His motives may be more interested ones."

This was a little romance of Mildred's, called forth by the annoyance and vexation of the moment. It is true that Tom Palmer frequently did call; he and Lucy had been brought up more like brother and sister than anything else; but Miss Arkell had certainly no foundation for the supposition she had expressed. And Mrs. Arkell knew she could have none; but she chose to believe it.

"It would be a very good match for Lucy," she replied. "Tom Palmer has a fine practice for so young a man; there are whispers, too, that he will be made town-clerk whenever the vacancy occurs."

Home went Mrs. Arkell; and the first of the family she happened to come across was Travice.

"Travice, come to me for an instant," she said, taking his arm to pace the court-yard; "I have been hearing news at Peter Arkell's. Lucy's a sly girl; she might have told us, I think. She is engaged--but I don't know how long since. Perhaps only in these few days, since the funeral."

"Engaged in what?"

"To be married. She marries Tom Palmer."

"It is not true," broke forth Travice. "Who in the world has been telling you that falsehood?"

"Not true!" repeated Mrs. Arkell. "Why don't you say it is not true that I am talking to you--not true that this is Monday--not true that you are Travice Arkell? Upon my word! You are very polite, sir."

"Who told it you?" reiterated Travice.

"_They_ told me. Mildred Arkell told me. I have been sitting there for the last hour, and we have been talking that and other affairs over. I can tell you what, Travice--it will be an excellent match for Lucy; a far superior one to anything she could have expected--and they seem to know it."

Even as she spoke, there shot a remembrance through Travice Arkell's heart, as an icebolt, of the night he had stood with Lucy in the chamber of her dying father, and her slighting words, in answer to his offer of a home: "I shall never have my home with you; nothing should induce me to it." She would not hear him; she told him he had no right so to speak to her. She had been singularly changed to him during the whole period of her father's illness; had shunned him by every means in her power; had been cold and distant when they were brought into contact. Before that, she was open and candid as the day. This fresh conduct had been altogether inexplicable to Travice, and he now asked himself whether it could have arisen from any engagement to marry Tom Palmer. If so, the change was in a degree accounted for; and it was certainly not impossible, if Tom Palmer had previously been wis.h.i.+ng to woo her, that Mr. Peter Arkell, surprised by his dangerous illness, should have hurried matters to an engagement.

The more Travice Arkell reflected on this phase of probabilities, the more he became impressed with it: he grew to look upon it as a certainty; he felt that all chance for himself with Lucy was over. Could he blame her? As things were with him and his father, he saw no chance of _his_ marrying her; and, in a worldly point of view, Lucy had done well--had done right. It's true he had never thought her worldly, and he had thought that she loved him; he believed that Tom Palmer had never been more to her than a wind that pa.s.ses: but why should not Lucy have grown self-interested, as most other girls were? And to Travice it was pretty plain she had.

He grew to look upon it as a positive certainty; he believed, without a shadow of doubt, that it must be the fact: and how bitterly and resentfully he all at once hated Tom Palmer, that gentleman himself would have been surprised to find. It was only natural that Travice should feel it as a personal injury inflicted on himself--a slight, an insult; you all know, perhaps, what this feeling is: and in his temper he would not for some days go near Lucy. It was only when he heard the news that Mildred was returning to London, and would take her niece with her, that he came to his senses.

That same evening he took his way to the house. Mildred, it should be observed, was equally at cross-purposes. She hastened to speak to Lucy the day of Mrs. Arkell's visit, asking her if _she_ had heard that Travice was engaged to Miss Fauntleroy; and Lucy answered after the manner of a reticent, self-possessed maiden, and made light of the thing, and was altogether a little hypocrite.

"Known _that_! O dear, yes! for some time," she said. "It would be a very good thing for Travice."

And so Mildred put aside any slight romance she had carved out for them, as wholly emanating from her imagination; but the sore feeling--that Lucy was despised by the mother, perhaps by the son--clung to her still.

She was sitting alone when Travice entered. He spoke for some time on indifferent subjects--of the news of the town; of her journey to London; of her future plans. They were to depart on the morrow.

"Where's Lucy?" he suddenly asked; and there was a restlessness in his manner throughout the interview that Mildred had never observed before.

"She is gone to spend the evening with Mrs. Palmer. I declined. Visiting seems quite out of my way now."

"I should have thought it would just now be out of Lucy's," spoke Travice, in a glow of resentment.

"Ordinary visiting would be," returned Miss Arkell, speaking with unnecessary coldness, and conscious of it. "Mrs. Palmer was here this afternoon; and, seeing how ill Lucy looked, she insisted on taking her home for an hour or two. Lucy will see no one there, except the family."

"What makes her look ill?"

Miss Arkell raised her eyes at the tone. "She is not really ill in body, I trust; but the loss of her father has been a bitter grief to her, and it is telling upon her spirits and looks. He was all she had in the world; for I--comparatively speaking--am a stranger."

There was a pause. Travice was leaning idly against the mantel-piece, in his favourite position, twirling the seals about that hung to his chain, his whole manner bespeaking indifference and almost contemptuous unconcern. Had anyone been there who knew him better than Mildred did, they could have told that it was only done to cover his real agitation.

Mildred stole a glance at the fine young man, and thought that if he resembled his father in person, he scarcely resembled him in courtesy.

"Does Lucy really mean to have that precious fool of a Tom Palmer?" he abruptly asked.

Miss Arkell felt indignant. She wondered how he dared to speak in that way; and she answered sharply.

"Tom Palmer is a most superior young man. _I_ have not perceived that he has any thing of the fool about him, and I don't think many others have.

Whenever he marries, he will make an excellent husband. Why should you wish to set me against him? Let me urge you not to interfere with Lucy's affairs, Travice; she is under my protection now."

Oh, if Mildred could but have read Travice Arkell's heart that night!--if she had but read Lucy's! How different things might have been! Travice moved to shake hands with her.

"I must wish you good evening," he said. "I hope you and Lucy will have a pleasant journey to-morrow. We shall see you both again some time, I suppose."

He went out with the cold words upon his lips. He went out with the conviction, that Lucy was to marry Tom Palmer, irrevocably seated on his heart. And Travice Arkell thought the world was a miserable world, no longer worth living in.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE TABLES TURNED.

Mildred had to go back for a time to Lady Dewsbury's. That lady's house and effects now lapsed to Sir Edward; but Sir Edward was abroad with his wife and children, and he begged Miss Arkell to remain in it, its mistress, until they could return. This was convenient for Mildred's plans. It afforded a change of scene for Lucy; and it gave the opportunity and time for the house in Westerbury to be renovated; in which she intended now to take up her abode. The house was Mildred's now: it came to her on the death of her brother, their father having so settled it; but for this settlement, poor Peter had disposed of it in his necessities long ago.