“By-the-bye, Arthur,” she said, suddenly, “have you heard anything about the Brocklehurst ball? When it is to be, I mean. Some one said something about its being earlier than usual, and I shall be rather glad, for it will be less likely to interfere with other things than when it is so near Christmas time.”
Captain Beverley looked up in surprise.
“It is to be in a fortnight – in less than a fortnight, indeed, on the fourth, and to-day is the twenty-third,” he replied. “Did you not know? I supposed you had made all your arrangements.”
“Oh! I am so sorry!” exclaimed Alys. “I had all sorts of plans in my head, and now it will be too late.”
“What will be too late? What are you talking about?” said Mr Cheviott; and when Alys explained, he looked rather ashamed of himself.
“I should have told you, Alys, but I completely forgot about it. I found a letter here last night when we arrived, asking us to go to Cleavelands on the twenty-second, and go to Brocklehurst with a party from there. You would like that, wouldn’t you?”
But Alys’s face did not brighten up as he expected.
“I thought you liked the Cleaves so much,” he said.
“Yes, I do. I like young Mrs Cleave very much. It isn’t that. It is only that I had set my heart on going from Romary, and asking nice people to go with us.”
“So we might have done, but for this visit to Paris,” said Mr Cheviott. “But it can’t be helped. There will be more balls in the neighbourhood before the winter is over.”
“Arthur,” said Alys, suddenly, but in a low voice, when, later in the evening, she had got Captain Beverley to herself in a corner of the drawing-room – “Arthur, do you know what I had set my heart on for the Brocklehurst ball.”
“What sort of dress, do you mean?” said her cousin. “No, I certainly do not know, and I am perfectly sure I couldn’t possibly guess. So you had better tell me.”
“I don’t mean a dress,” said Alys, contemptuously, “I meant a plan.”
Captain Beverley did not at once answer.
“A plan, I say, Arthur, don’t you hear?” repeated Alys, impatiently.
“I beg your pardon,” exclaimed Arthur, rallying his attention. “A plan to show me, did you say? For my new farm-house? It is very good of you to trouble about it.”
“Oh! Arthur, how provoking you are! What is the matter with you?” exclaimed Alys. “Of course it wasn’t that sort of plan I was talking of. It was a plan of mine – one that I had made in my head, don’t you understand? It was about the Brocklehurst ball. I wanted to coax Laurence into letting me call on the Westerns, Arthur, the Westerns at Hathercourt, you know, and then I would have got him to let me ask them – the girls, of course, I mean – to come to stay at Romary for two or three days, and go to the ball with us. Wouldn’t it have been nice, Arthur? It would have been a treat for them, as the children say. They are such pretty, nice girls, and I am sure they don’t have many ‘treats’.”
She looked up in Arthur’s face with eager, sparkling eyes, and this time she had no need to recall his attention. His eyes were sparkling too, his colour rose, his voice even seemed to her to shake a little with suppressed excitement as he replied to her:
“Alys, you are the best and nicest girl in the world. It was just like you, you dear good child, to think of such a thing, and I thank you – I always shall thank you for it with all my heart. I felt sure,” he went on, more quietly – “I felt sure I should find I might count upon you, and now I know it. I have a great deal to tell you, Alys, and I – ”
But at this moment Mr Cheviott’s voice was heard.
“Alys,” he was saying, “are you not going to play a little? What mischief are Arthur and you concocting over there?”
He came towards them as he spoke. Captain Beverley had laid his hand on Alys’s in his eagerness, his face was flushed, his whole manner and air might easily have been mistaken for those of an accepted or would-be lover, and the start with which he threw himself back on his own chair as his cousin approached, increased the apparent awkwardness of the situation. But Alys, though her cheeks were rosier, her eyes brighter than their wont, answered quietly and without confusion:
“We are not concocting mischief, Laurence,” she said; “we are too wise and sensible for anything of the kind, as you might know by this time. We’ll have another talk about our plans to-morrow, Arthur. Come and sing something now to please aunt, as she made an effort to do you honour by coming down to dinner.”
And the tête-à-tête between the cousins was not renewed that evening, nor, as Alys had proposed, “to-morrow,” for Arthur did not make his appearance at Miss Winstanley’s the next day at all. Mr Cheviott saw him and went with him to the architect’s, and brought back word that he was over head and ears in model pig-sties and shippons.
“And in farm-houses too,” he said. “I think it very foolish of him to lay out money on doing much to the house itself. It is quite good enough as it is for the sort of bailiff he should get.”
“Oh, then, he does not intend to live at Hathercourt Edge himself,” remarked Miss Winstanley.
Mr Cheviott turned upon her rather sharply.
“Live there himself!” he exclaimed, “of course not. What could have put such an idea in your head, my dear aunt? At the most, all the income he can possibly hope to make out of Hathercourt will be within three hundred a year, and he has quite three thousand a year independent of that; he could have no possible motive for settling at Hathercourt.”
“But is there not some condition attached to Arthur’s fortune?” said Miss Winstanley, vaguely. “I remember something about it, and he said the other day that he would not be of age for two years.”
“No; by his father’s will he is not to be considered of age till he is twenty-seven.”
“Then I should say it would be a very good thing for him to settle down at Hathercourt for two years and learn farming before he has to manage Lydon for himself,” said Alys.
“Nonsense, Alys,” said her brother, severely. “What can you possibly know about anything of the kind?”
But Alys did not appear snubbed.
“I rather suspect Arthur has some plan of the kind in his head, whether Laurence thinks it nonsense or not,” she remarked to her aunt, when they were by themselves in the drawing-room. “By-the-bye, aunt, what did you mean about there being some sort of condition attached to Arthur’s getting his property? I never heard of it.”
“Oh, I don’t know, my dear. I dare say I have got hold of the wrong end of the story – I very often do,” said Miss Winstanley, nervously, for something in Mr Cheviott’s manner had made her suspect she was trenching on forbidden ground. “And besides, if you have never been told anything about it, it shows that, if there is anything to hear, Laurence did not wish you to hear it.”
“Laurence forgets sometimes that I am no longer a child,” retorted Alys, drawing herself up. “However, it doesn’t matter. If Arthur looks upon me as a sister, it is best I should hear all about his affairs from himself. But, Aunt Fanny,” she continued, in a softer tone, “was there not something unhappy about Arthur’s parents? Laurence has alluded to it sometimes before me, and I have often wondered what it was.”
“It was just everything,” replied Miss Winstanley, sadly, “the marriage was a most foolish one. They were utterly unsuited to each other, and it was just misery from beginning to end.”
“Was Arthur’s mother not a lady?” asked Alys.
“Oh, yes; you could not have called her unladylike,” replied Miss Winstanley. “It was not that – she married Mr Beverley without any affection for him, entirely for the sake of his position. She was