The Vicar of Wrexhill. Frances Milton Trollope
as a bear to her.—I don't believe you ever found yourself so entirely neglected before, my dear?"
"I have never witnessed attention more gratifying to me than that which I have seen displayed this morning," replied Rosalind.
"You are a good girl, a very good girl, my dear, and I shall always love you for coming over with this poor dear disinherited child."
"Miss Torrington, I am delighted to see you, now and ever, my dear young lady," said Lady Harrington, who, when she chose it, could be as dignified, and as courteous too, as any lady in the land.
"You have walked over, I am sure, by the bright freshness of your looks. Now, then, sit down one on each side of me, that I may be able to see you without hoisting a lunette d'approche across this prodigious table."
"And so, because your ladyship is near-sighted," said Sir Gilbert, "William and I are to sit at this awful distance from these beautiful damsels? You are a tiresome old soul as ever lived!"
"And that's the reason you appear so profoundly melancholy and miserable at this moment," said Lady Harrington, looking with no trifling degree of satisfaction at the radiant good-humour and happiness which the unexpected arrival of Helen had caused to be visible in the countenance of her boisterous husband. "Do you find William much altered, Helen?" she continued. "I wonder if any one has had the grace to present Colonel Harrington to Miss Torrington?"
"Helen did me that kind office," said the colonel, "and I suppose she must do the same for me to little Fanny. I long to see if she continues as surpassingly beautiful as she was when I took my sad, reluctant leave of Mowbray Park."
Rosalind immediately became answerable for the undiminished beauty of Fanny, adding to her report on this point a declaration that the whole family were anxious to renew their acquaintance with him.
This was the nearest approach that any of the party ventured to make towards the mention of Mowbray Park or its inhabitants. Nevertheless, the breakfast passed cheerfully, and even without a word from Sir Gilbert in allusion to the destitute condition of Helen, and her brother and sister. But when even the baronet had disposed of his last egg-shell, pushed the ham fairly away from him, and swallowed his last bowl of tea, the beautiful colour of Helen began gradually to deepen; she ceased to speak, and hardly seemed to hear what was said to her.
Rosalind took the hint, and with more tact than is usually found in the possession of seventeen and a half, she said to Lady Harrington,
"If I promise to keep my hands not only from picking and stealing, but from touching, will your ladyship indulge me with a sight of your press, and your boxes, and a volume or two of your hortus siccus? for I feel considerable aspirations after the glory of becoming a botanist myself."
"My ladyship will show you something infinitely more to the purpose, then, if you will come to the hothouse with me," replied Lady Harrington, rising, and giving an intelligible glance to her son as she did so, which immediately caused him to rise and follow her. "I cannot take you where I should be sure to overhear them, my dear," she added in a whisper as she led Rosalind from the room; "for if my rough diamond should chance to be too rough with her, I should infallibly burst out upon them; and yet I know well enough that I should do nothing but mischief."
Helen was thus left alone with the kind-hearted but pertinacious baronet. He seemed to have a misgiving of the attack that was about to be opened upon him; for he made a fidgetty movement in his chair, pushed it back, and looked so very much inclined to run away, that Helen saw no time was to be lost, and, in a voice not over-steady, said,
"I want to speak to you, Sir Gilbert, about my dear mamma. I fear from what you said to Charles, and more still by nobody's coming from Oakley to see us, that you are angry with her.—If it is about the will, Sir Gilbert, you do her great injustice: I am very, very sure that she neither wished for such a will, nor knew any thing about it."
"It is very pretty and dutiful in you, Miss Helen, to say so, and to think so too if you can. Perhaps I might have done the same at nineteen; but at sixty-five, child, one begins to know a little better what signs and tokens mean.—There is no effect without a cause, Miss Helen. The effect in this affair is already pretty visible to all eyes, and will speedily become more so, you may depend upon it. The cause may be still hid from babes and sucklings, but not from an old fellow like me, who knew your poor father, girl, before you were hatched or thought of—and knew him to be both a good and a wise man, who would never have done the deed he did unless under the influence of one as ever near and ever dear to him as your mother."
"You have known my mother too, Sir Gilbert, for many, many years:—did you ever see in her any symptom of the character you now attribute to her?"
"If I had, Miss Helen, I should not loathe and abominate her hypocrisy as I now do. I will never see her more—for all our sakes: for if I did, I know right well that I could not restrain my indignation within moderate bounds."
"Then certainly it would be better that you should not see her," said the weeping Helen: "for indeed, sir, I think such unmerited indignation would almost kill her."
"If you knew any thing about the matter, child, you would be aware that merited indignation would be more likely to disagree with her. Unmerited indignation does one no harm in the world, as I can testify from experience; for my lady is dreadfully indignant, as I dare say you guess, at my keeping her and William away from Mowbray Park: and it's ten to one but you will be indignant too, child;—but I can't help it. I love you all three very much, Helen; but I must do what I think right, for all that."
"Not indignant, Sir Gilbert;—at least, that would not be the prevailing feeling with me, though a sense of injustice might make it so with my poor mother. What I shall feel will be grief—unceasing grief, if the friend my beloved father most valued and esteemed continues to refuse his countenance and affection to the bereaved family he has left."
From the time this conversation began, Sir Gilbert had been striding up and down the room, as it was always his custom to do when he felt himself in a rage, or was conscious that he was about to be so. He now stopped opposite Helen; and while something very like tenderness almost impeded his utterance, he said,
"That's trash—abominable false trash! Miss Helen. After what's passed to-day, to say nothing of times past, you must know well enough that I'm not likely to refuse my countenance and affection to your father's children;—bereaved they are, sure enough! You know as well as I do, that I love you all three—for your own sakes, girl, as well as for his;—and your pretending to doubt it, was a hit of trumpery womanhood, Helen—so never make use of it again: for you see I understand the sex—and that's just the reason why I like my old woman better than any other she in the wide world;—she never tries any make-believe tricks upon me."
"Believe me, Sir Gilbert," said Helen, smiling, "I hate tricks as much as my godmother can: and if it were otherwise, you are the last person I should try them upon. But how can we think you love us, if you will not come near Mowbray?"
"You may think it, and know it, very easily, child, by the welcome you shall always find here. It is very likely that you may not be long comfortable at home; and before it happens, remember I have told you that you shall always have a home at Oakley: but it must not be on condition of bringing your mother with you; for see her I will not—and there's an end."
Helen remained silent. She felt painfully convinced that, at least for the present, she should gain nothing by arguing the cause of her mother any farther; and after a long pause, during which Sir Gilbert continued to pace up and down before her, she rose, and sighing deeply, said,
"I believe it is time for us to return.—Good-b'ye, Sir Gilbert."
There was something in the tone of her voice which very nearly overset all the sturdy resolution of the baronet; but instead of yielding to the weakness, as he would have called it, like a skilful general he marched off the field with his colours still flying, and certainly without giving his adversary any reasonable ground to hope for victory.
"They are all in the hothouse, I believe," said he, walking before Helen to a door of