The Quiet Gentleman

His wife smiled indulgently, and shook her head, but events proved Sir Thomas to have been right. On the very next morning, when Marianne sat in the window of the front parlour with her Mama, helping her to hem some handkerchiefs, a horseman was seen trotting up the drive. Lady Bolderwood did not immediately recognize him, and she was just wondering aloud who it could be when she became aware of an extraordinary change in her listless daughter. Marianne was blushing, her head bent over her stitchery, but the oddest little smile trembling on her lips. In great astonishment, Lady Bolderwood stared at her.

“I think — I believe — it is Lord Ulverston, Mama!” murmured Marianne.

Lord Ulverston it was, and in a very few moments he was shaking hands with them, fluently explaining that since his way led past their house he could not but call to enquire whether Sir Thomas and her ladyship were quite recovered from their indispositions. Lady Bolderwood’s astonishment grew, for as he turned from her to take Marianne’s hand in his she perceived such a glowing look in her daughter’s countenance, such a shy yet beaming smile in her eyes as made her seem almost a stranger to her own mother.

Sir Thomas, informed by a servant of his lordship’s arrival, then entered the room, and made the Viscount heartily welcome. To his lady’s considerable indignation, he bestowed on her a quizzing look which informed her how far more exactly he had read their daughter’s mind than she had. The Viscount stayed chatting easily for perhaps half an hour, and if his eyes strayed rather often to Marianne’s face, and his voice underwent a subtle change when he had occasion to address her, his conduct was otherwise strictly decorous. When he rose to depart, Sir Thomas escorted him to the front-door. No sooner, however, was the parlour-door shut behind them than his lordship requested the favour of a few words with his host.

“Ho! So that’s it, is it?” said Sir Thomas. “Well, well, you had better come into my library, my lord, I suppose!”

When Sir Thomas presently rejoined his ladies, and they had watched the Viscount riding away, Marianne asked if he had been showing his Indian treasures to his lordship.

“Ay, that was it,” replied Sir Thomas, chuckling. But when Marianne had left the room, he said to his wife, with one of his cracks of mirth: “Indian treasures! It wasn’t any Indian treasure his lordship came after!”

“Good heavens!” she exclaimed. “You cannot, surely, mean that he has made an offer for Marianne?”

“That’s it. Came to ask my permission to pay his addresses to her, just as he ought.”

“But he has only been acquainted with her a few days!”

“What’s that got to say to anything? I knew my mind five minutes after I met you, my lady!”

“She is too young! Why, she is not yet out!”

“Ay, so I told him. I said we could not sanction any engagement until she had seen a bit of the world.”

She regarded him with suspicion. “Sir Thomas, do you mean to tell me you gave him permission to pay his addresses?”

“Why, I said if my girl loved him I would not say no,” he confessed. “It would be no bad thing for her, you know, Maria. Setting aside the title, he’s just the cut of a man I fancy for my little puss. He ain’t after her fortune: from what he tells me, he’s a man of comfortable fortune himself. I can tell you this, I’d as lief her affections were engaged before we expose her to all the handsome young scamps with high-sounding titles and lean purses who are hanging out in London for rich wives!”

“I am persuaded she would never — ”

“Maria, my dear, there’s no saying what she might do, for she’s not up to snuff, like some of the young ladies I’ve seen, and when a girl is heiress to a hundred thousand pounds every needy rascal will be paying court to her! A pretty thing it would be if she chose to set her heart on a man that only wants her fortune!”

“Yes, yes, but — My dear Sir Thomas, you run on so fast! You do not consider! The Wrexhams might not care for the match, after all!”

He gave a dry chuckle. “There’s only one thing could make the Wrexhams, or any other high family, dislike it, Maria, and that’s for me to gamble my fortune away on ’Change!” he said.

Chapter 13

While the Viscount was pursuing his courtship of Marianne, Martin seemed to be making an effort to get upon better terms with his half-brother. His attempts at friendliness, which were sometimes rather too studied, were tranquilly received, the Earl neither encouraging nor repulsing him, but holding himself a little aloof, and meeting advances that were not unlike those of a half-savage puppy with a serenity which was as unruffled by present blandishments as it had been by past enmity.

Though the Viscount might regard Martin’s change of face with suspicion, Theo and Miss Morville observed it with feelings of hope, and of relief.