Thereby Hangs a Tale Part 53

"Yes, dear old d.i.c.k's very happy," said Pratt, gravely. "Rich, loved, and with the fixture all sunshine. She's a sweet girl."

"Yes, a rose--with a thorn of a sister, ready to pester her husband,"

said Fin. "Yes, Mr Pratt, you had better go. It is not good for young men to be idle."

"So I have been thinking," said Pratt--"especially poor fellows like myself."

"How is our little friend?" said Fin, maliciously.

"What little friend?"

"The little, round-cheeked niece of Mrs Lloyd--Polly, isn't her name?"

"Really, I don't know, Miss Rea," said Pratt, smiling.

"Fie, Mr Pratt!" said Fin. "Why, you are always being seen with her in the lane. Is it true you are to be engaged?"

Pratt looked at her sharply.

"Does it give you so much pleasure to tease?" he said, quietly.

"Tease? I thought it was a settled thing."

"I don't think you did," said Pratt, quietly.

"Well," said Fin, laughing, "Mr Mervyn told me the other day that--oh, look at that now!"

The last words were said by Fin to herself; for as she mentioned Mr Mervyn's name Pratt turned slowly away, and going to a table began to turn over the leaves of a book.

In the meantime Lady Rea had had a few words with Trevor.

"I declare I felt quite frightened of her, my dear."

"It's her way only," said Trevor, smiling. "She nursed me like a mother, Lady Rea; and she and her husband have for years done almost as they liked here, only checked by the agent and my poor father's executors, who seem to have come down once a year to look at the place so long as they lived; but they have both gone now."

"She looked dreadfully cross, though, at Tiny--just as if, my dear, she was horribly jealous of her. And now, Richard, my dear, you won't be offended if I ask a favour of you?"

"Certainly not," said Trevor, in the same low whisper in which the conversation was carried on.

"Then make her send that niece of hers away. After what you told me, I'm sure it would be for the best; because while she is here the poor woman will always be thinking of her disappointed plans."

"Well, but," said Trevor, smiling, "I was thinking of hurrying on her marriage with my keeper, Humphrey; the poor fellow is desperately fond of her, and, as far as I can make out, the feeling is mutual."

"Oh, if that's it," said Lady Rea, "pray don't do anything to make the young people unhappy."

"Yes, Trevor," said Sir Hampton, "fifty feet by twenty will be the size."

The conversation was carried on henceforth in voices pitched now in the normal key.

The distance was so short that it was decided to walk back through the moonlit lane, and as Trevor and Pratt accompanied the party, it was a matter of course that Fin should walk papa off first, Lady Rea following with Pratt, and Tiny lingering behind in the silvered arcades--dreamy, loving, too happy to speak, and feeling that if life would but always be the same, how could they ever tire?

Here, in the rugged lane, all was black darkness, and the gnarled tree trunks seemed to spring from sable velvet. A few yards farther, a sheaf of silver arrows seemed shot down through the foliage upon the laced ferns that rose like a tiny forest of palms; down by their side there was the rippling tinkle of water, gurgling amongst stones; and again a few steps, and a pool shone like molten silver. Above all, the air was soft, humid, and balmy; and love seemed breathed in the gentle wind that barely stirred the leaves. They had no need to talk, for it was very sweet; and they could foresee no black clouds to come sweeping across their horizon.

Tolcarne gates at last, new and crest-crowned--good-bye--and then out cigars, and a matter-of-fact walk back, the young men both too dreamy to speak. And after a brief "Good night, d.i.c.k, old fellow"--"Good night, Franky, old boy," each sought his room--Trevor thinking the while of Lady Rea's words, and how that he had hardly seen Polly lately, while he had been too happy in his love to so much as think of Mrs Lloyd and her baffled plans. For her part, she seemed to have avoided him ever since she had heard of the engagement that he had made.

"Ah, well," he said, smiling, as he gazed from the open window at the moonlit shimmering sea, "all these things come right in the end. What need have I to trouble, with life so pleasurably spread out before me?

Heigho! I don't deserve such good luck; but I think I can bear it like a good man and true. I wonder, though, whether Frank really cares for little Fin!"

Ten minutes after, Trevor was dreaming happily of his love, without a sign of cloud or storm in his sunlit fancies; but they were gathering fast the while.

Volume 2, Chapter XVII.

A LITTLE CONFESSION.

But Mrs Lloyd, though quiet for a time, and letting matters rest till the termination of Vanleigh and Sir Felix Landells's visit, was anything but dormant.

The fact was, that Vanleigh had been in the way upon more than one occasion. When Polly had been sent for a walk in the hope of enchanting the "young master," Vanleigh had met her, and been so attentive that the girl had come back at last, sobbing and almost defiant, telling her aunt that sooner than be so treated she would run away back to the mountains in Wales.

This put a stop to it for the time, and Aunt Lloyd waited, hearing rumours that the two London visitors were engaged to the young ladies of Tolcarne, and rubbing her hands thereon, for these were threatened rivals out of the way.

Her encounters with Trevor had been few and far between; but all seemed satisfactory, and, to use her own words, she "bided her time."

When the news came to her ears, endorsed by the sudden departure of the visitors, and further confirmed by the many visits to Tolcarne, and lastly by the coming of the Reas to Penreife, that Trevor was engaged to Valentina Rea, the woman was furious.

"It shan't go on, Lloyd--I won't have it. I'll put a stop to it. He shall marry Polly, or--"

"Martha, Martha!" cried her husband, wringing his hands--"you will ruin us."

"Ruin! I'll ruin him--an upstart! I'll have him on his knees to me.

After the way in which I brought him up, to turn upon me like this. He shall marry Polly!"

"How can you be so mad?" groaned Lloyd. "Oh, Martha, think of our old age."

"Think!" said Mrs Lloyd, contemptuously, "I do think. Mad? Isn't a girl with the blood of the Lloyds in her veins better than the daughter of an upstart London merchant? There--hold your tongue; and don't you interfere. I'm not going to be stopped in my plans, so I tell you.

Lloyd, are you asleep?"

"No," said her husband, with a heavy sigh, "I wish I was, so as to forget my troubles."

"You dolt!" exclaimed Mrs Lloyd. "Have you seen Humphrey hanging about lately?"

There was no answer.

"I say, have you seen Humphrey hanging about or talking to Polly lately?

I don't want to think the girl artful; but she has been very quiet, and I hardly like it. Lloyd, do you hear what I say?"

There was a long-drawn breath for reply, and Mrs Lloyd went on making her plans--giving her husband the credit of being asleep.

But the latter was very wide awake, and he had seen something that night of which he did not wish to tell. For while Mrs Lloyd had been busy with the company that evening, there had come a soft tap on the housekeeper's room window, whose effect was to make little Polly turn violently red in the face, begin to tremble, then, after listening at the door, steal out, little thinking that the butler had seen her go.