The Ordeal of Richard Feverel — Complete. George Meredith

she responded. “I have no trouble now in patching and piecing that rag the world calls—a character. I can sit at your feet every day unquestioned. To be sure, others do the same, but they are female eccentrics, and have cast off the rag altogether.”

      Sir Austin drew nearer to her. “You would have made an admirable mother, madam.”

      This from Sir Austin was very like positive wooing.

      “It is,” he continued, “ten thousand pities that you are not one.”

      “Do you think so?” She spoke with humility.

      “I would,” he went on, “that heaven had given you a daughter.”

      “Would you have thought her worthy of Richard?”

      “Our blood, madam, should have been one!”

      The lady tapped her toe with her parasol. “But I am a mother,” she said. “Richard is my son. Yes! Richard is my boy,” she reiterated.

      Sir Austin most graciously appended, “Call him ours, madam,” and held his head as if to catch the word from her lips, which, however, she chose to refuse, or defer. They made the coloured West a common point for their eyes, and then Sir Austin said:

      “As you will not say 'ours,' let me. And, as you have therefore an equal claim on the boy, I will confide to you a project I have lately conceived.”

      The announcement of a project hardly savoured of a coming proposal, but for Sir Austin to confide one to a woman was almost tantamount to a declaration. So Lady Blandish thought, and so said her soft, deep-eyed smile, as she perused the ground while listening to the project. It concerned Richard's nuptials. He was now nearly eighteen. He was to marry when he was five-and-twenty. Meantime a young lady, some years his junior, was to be sought for in the homes of England, who would be every way fitted by education, instincts, and blood—on each of which qualifications Sir Austin unreservedly enlarged—to espouse so perfect a youth and accept the honourable duty of assisting in the perpetuation of the Feverels. The baronet went on to say that he proposed to set forth immediately, and devote a couple of months, to the first essay in his Coelebite search.

      “I fear,” said Lady Blandish, when the project had been fully unfolded, “you have laid down for yourself a difficult task. You must not be too exacting.”

      “I know it.” The baronet's shake of the head was piteous.

      “Even in England she will be rare. But I confine myself to no class. If I ask for blood it is for untainted, not what you call high blood. I believe many of the middle classes are frequently more careful—more pure-blooded—than our aristocracy. Show me among them a God-fearing family who educate their children—I should prefer a girl without brothers and sisters—as a Christian damsel should be educated—say, on the model of my son, and she may be penniless, I will pledge her to Richard Feverel.”

      Lady Blandish bit her lip. “And what do you do with Richard while you are absent on this expedition?”

      “Oh!” said the baronet, “he accompanies his father.”

      “Then give it up. His future bride is now pinafored and bread-and-buttery. She romps, she cries, she dreams of play and pudding. How can he care for her? He thinks more at his age of old women like me. He will be certain to kick against her, and destroy your plan, believe me, Sir Austin.”

      “Ay? ay? do you think that?” said the baronet.

      Lady Blandish gave him a multitude of reasons.

      “Ay! true,” he muttered. “Adrian said the same. He must not see her. How could I think of it! The child is naked woman. He would despise her. Naturally!”

      “Naturally!” echoed the lady.

      “Then, madam,” and the baronet rose, “there is one thing for me to determine upon. I must, for the first time in his life, leave him.”

      “Will you, indeed?” said the lady.

      “It is my duty, having thus brought him up, to see that he is properly mated,—not wrecked upon the quicksands of marriage, as a youth so delicately trained might be; more easily than another! Betrothed, he will be safe from a thousand snares. I may, I think, leave him for a term. My precautions have saved him from the temptations of his season.”

      “And under whose charge will you leave him?” Lady Blandish inquired.

      She had emerged from the temple, and stood beside Sir Austin on the upper steps, under a clear summer twilight.

      “Madam!” he took her hand, and his voice was gallant and tender, “under whose but yours?”

      As the baronet said this, he bent above her hand, and raised it to his lips.

      Lady Blandish felt that she had been wooed and asked in wedlock. She did not withdraw her hand. The baronet's salute was flatteringly reverent. He deliberated over it, as one going through a grave ceremony. And he, the scorner of women, had chosen her for his homage! Lady Blandish forgot that she had taken some trouble to arrive at it. She received the exquisite compliment in all its unique honey-sweet: for in love we must deserve nothing or the fine bloom of fruition is gone.

      The lady's hand was still in durance, and the baronet had not recovered from his profound inclination, when a noise from the neighbouring beechwood startled the two actors in this courtly pantomime. They turned their heads, and beheld the hope of Raynham on horseback surveying the scene. The next moment he had galloped away.