Ravenshoe - Ravenshoe Part 28
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Ravenshoe Part 28

Charles stepped forward and rang; and Miss Hicks, as Clotho, who had half-risen, sat down again, and wove her web grimly.

Atropos appeared, after an interval, looking as beautiful as the dawn.

So Charles was looking too intently at her to notice the quick, eager glances that the old woman threw at her as she came into the room. His heart leapt up as he went forward to meet her; and he took her hand and pressed it, and would have done so if all the furies in Pandemonium were there to prevent him.

It did not please her ladyship to see this; and so Charles did it once more, and then they sat down together in a window.

"And how am I looking?" said Adelaide, gazing at him full in the face.

"Not a single pretty compliment for me after so long? I require compliments; I am used to them. Lady Hainault paid me some this morning."

Lady Hainault, as Lachesis, laughed and woved. Charles thought, "I suppose she and Adelaide have been having a shindy. She and aunt fall out sometimes."

Adelaide and Charles had a good deal of quiet conversation in the window; but what two lovers could talk with Clotho and Lachesis looking on, weaving? I, of course, know perfectly well what they talked of, but it is hardly worth setting down here. I find that lovers' conversations are not always interesting to the general public. After a decent time, Charles rose to go, and Adelaide went out by a side door.

Charles made his adieux to Clotho and Lachesis, and departed at the other end of the room. The door had barely closed on him, when Lady Hainault, eagerly thrusting her face towards Miss Hicks, hissed out--

"Did I give her time enough? Were her eyes red? Does he suspect anything?"

"You gave her time enough, I should say," said Miss Hicks, deliberately.

"I didn't see that her eyes were red. But he must certainly suspect that you and she are not on the best of terms, from what she said."

"Do you think he knows that Hainault is at home? Did he ask for Hainault?"

"I don't know," said Miss Hicks.

"She shall not stop in the house. She shall go back to Lady Ascot. I won't have her in the house," said the old lady, furiously.

"Why did you have her here, Lady Hainault?"

"You know perfectly well, Hicks. You know I only had her to spite old Ascot. But she shall stay here no longer."

"She must stay for the wedding now," said Miss Hicks.

"I suppose she must," said Lady Hainault; "but, after that, she shall pack. If the Burton people only knew what was going on, the match would be broken off."

"I don't believe anything is going on," said Miss Hicks; "at least, not on his side. You are putting yourself in a passion for nothing, and you will be ill after it."

"I am not putting myself in a passion, and I won't be ill, Hicks! And you are impudent to me, as you always are. I tell you that she must be got rid of, and she must marry that young booby, or we are all undone. I say that Hainault is smitten with her."

"I say he is not, Lady Hainault. I say that what there is is all on her side."

"She shall go back to Ranford after the wedding. I was a fool to have such a beautiful vixen in the house at all."

We shall not see much more of Lady Hainault. Her son is about to marry the beautiful Miss Burton, and make her Lady Hainault. We shall see something of her by and by.

The wedding came off the next week. A few days previously Charles rode over to Casterton and saw Adelaide. He had with him a note and jewel-case. The note was from Cuthbert, in which he spoke of her as his future sister, and begged her to accept the loan of "these few poor jewels." She was graciously pleased to do so; and Charles took his leave very soon, for the house was turned out of the windows, and the next day but one "the long Burton girl" became Lady Hainault, and Lady Ascot's friend became Dowager. Lady Emily did not wear pearls at the wedding.

She wore her own splendid golden hair, which hung round her lovely face like a glory. None who saw the two could say which was the most beautiful of these two celebrated blondes--Adelaide, the imperial, or Lady Emily, the gentle and the winning.

But, when Lady Ascot heard that Adelaide had appeared at the wedding with the emeralds, she was furious. "She has gone," said that deeply injured lady--"she, a penniless girl, has actually gone, and, without my consent or knowledge, borrowed the Ravenshoe emeralds, and flaunted in them at a wedding. That girl would dance over my grave, Brooks."

"Miss Adelaide," said Brooks, "must have looked very well in them, my lady!" for Brooks was good-natured, and wished to turn away her ladyship's wrath.

Lady Ascot turned upon her and withered her. She only said, "Emeralds upon pink! Heugh!" But Brooks was withered nevertheless.

I cannot give you any idea as to how Lady Ascot said "Heugh!" as I have written it above. We don't know how the Greeks pronounced the amazing interjections in the Greek plays. We can only write them down.

"Perhaps the jewels were not remarked, my lady," said the maid, making a second and worse shot.

"Not remarked, you foolish woman!" said the angry old lady. "Not remark a thousand pounds' worth of emeralds upon a girl who is very well known to be a pensioner of mine. And I daren't speak to her, or we shall have a scene with Charles. I am glad of one thing, though; it shows that Charles is thoroughly in earnest. Now let me get to bed, that's a good soul; and don't be angry with me if I am short tempered, for heaven knows I have enough to try me! Send one of the footmen across to the stable to know if Mahratta has had her nitre. Say that I insist on a categorical answer. Has Lord Ascot come home?"

"Yes, my lady."

"He might have come and given me some news about the horse. But there, poor boy, I can forgive him."

CHAPTER XXII.

THE LAST GLIMPSE OF OXFORD.

Oxford. The front of Magdalen Hall, about which the least said the soonest mended. On the left, further on, All Souls, which seems to have been built by the same happy hand which built the new courts of St.

John's, Cambridge (for they are about equally bad). On the right, the Clarendon and the Schools, blocking out the western sky. Still more to the right, a bit of Exeter, and all Brazenose. In front, the Radcliff, the third dome in England, and, beyond, the straight facade of St.

Mary's, gathering its lines upward ever, till tired of window and buttress, of crocket, finial, gargoyle, and all the rest of it, it leaps up aloft in one glorious crystal, and carries up one's heart with it into the heaven above.

Charles Ravenshoe and Marston. They stood side by side on the pavement, and their eyes roamed together over the noble mass of architecture, passing from the straight lines, and abrupt corner of the Radcliffe, on to the steeple of St. Mary's. They stood silent for a moment, and then Marston said--

"Serve him right."

"Why?" said Charles.

"Because he had no business to be driving tandem at all. He can't afford it. And, besides, if he could, why should he defy the authorities by driving tandem? Nobody would drive tandem if it wasn't forbidden."

"Well, he is sent down, and therefore your virtue may spare him."

"Sent down!" said Marston, testily, "he never ought to have come up. He was only sent here to be pitchforked through the Schools, and get a family living."

"Well, well," said Charles; "I was very fond of him."

"Pish!" said Marston. Whereat Charles laughed uproariously, and stood in the gutter. His mirth was stopped by his being attacked by a toothless black-and-tan terrier, who was so old that he could only bark in a whisper, but whose privilege it was to follow about one of the first divinity scholars of the day, round the sunniest spots in the town. The dog having been appeased, Charles and Marston stood aside, and got a kindly smile from the good old man, in recognition of their having touched their caps to him.

"Charley," said Marston, "I am so glad to hear of your going on so well. Mind you, if you had stuck to your work sooner, you would have had more than a second in Moderations. You must, and you shall, get a first, you know. I will have it."

"Never, my boy, never;" said Charles: "I haven't head for it."

"Nonsense. You are a great fool; but you may get your first."

Thereupon Charles laughed again, louder than before, and wanted to know what his friend had been eating to upset his liver. To which Marston answered "Bosh!" and then they went down Oriel Lane, "And so by Merton,"

as the fox-hunters say, to Christ Church Meadow.