"Pardon me, my dear Anne: it was hazardous so to speak to you. I ought to have said his thoughtless ways. Quant à moi, je ne vois pas la différence. Do you understand French?"
Miss Ashton looked at her, really not knowing what this style of conversation might mean. Maude continued; she had a habit of putting forth a sting on occasion, or what she hoped might be a sting.
"You are staring at the superfluous question. Of course it is one in these French days, when everyone speaks it. What was I saying? Oh, about Percival. Should he ever have the luck to marry, meaning the income, he will make a docile husband; but his wife will have to keep him under her finger and thumb; she must be master as well as mistress, for his own sake."
"I think Mr. Elster would not care to be so spoken of," said Miss Ashton, her face beginning to glow.
"You devoted girl! It is you who don't care to hear it. Take care, Anne; too much love is not good for gaining the mastership; and I have heard that you are—shall I say it?—éperdue."
Anne, in spite of her calm good sense, was actually provoked to a retort in kind, and felt terribly vexed with herself for it afterwards. "A rumour of the same sort has been breathed as to the Lady Maude Kirton's regard for Lord Hartledon."
"Has it?" returned Lady Maude, with a cool tone and a glowing face. "You are angry with me without reason. Have I not offered to swear to you an eternal friendship?"
Anne shook her head, and her lips parted with a curious expression. "I do not swear so lightly, Lady Maude."
"What if I were to avow to you that it is true?—that I do love Lord Hartledon, deeply as it is known you love his brother," she added, dropping her voice—"would you believe me?"
Anne looked at the speaker's face, but could read nothing. Was she in jest or earnest?
"No, I would not believe you," she said, with a smile. "If you did love him, you would not proclaim it."
"Exactly. I was jesting. What is Lord Hartledon to me?—save that we are cousins, and passably good friends. I must avow one thing, that I like him better than I do his brother."
"For that no avowal is necessary," said Anne; "the fact is sufficiently evident."
"You are right, Anne;" and for once Maude spoke earnestly. "I do not like Percival Elster. But I will always be civil to him for your sweet sake."
"Why do you dislike him?—if I may ask it. Have you any particular reason for doing so?"
"I have no reason in the world. He is a good-natured, gentlemanly fellow; and I know no ill of him, except that he is always getting into scrapes, and dropping, as I hear, a lot of money. But if he got out of his last guinea, and went almost in rags, it would be nothing to me; so that's not it. One does take antipathies; I dare say you do, Miss Ashton. What a blessing Hartledon did not die in that fever he caught last year! Val would have inherited. What a mercy!"
"That he lived? or that Val is not Lord Hartledon?"
"Both. But I believe I meant that Val is not reigning."
"You think he would not have made a worthy inheritor?"
"A worthy inheritor? Oh, I was not glancing at that phase of the question. Here he comes! I will give up my seat to him."
It is possible Lady Maude expected some pretty phrases of affection; begging her to keep it. If so, she was mistaken. Anne Ashton was one of those essentially quiet, self-possessed girls in society, whose manners seem almost to border on apathy. She did not say "Do go," or "Don't go." She was perfectly passive; and Maude moved away half ashamed of herself, and feeling, in spite of her jealousy and her prejudice, that if ever there was a ladylike girl upon earth, it was Anne Ashton.
"How do you like her, Anne?" asked Val Elster, dropping into the vacant place.
"Not much."
"Don't you? She is very handsome."
"Very handsome indeed. Quite beautiful. But still I don't like her."
"You would like her if you knew her. She has a rare spirit, only the old dowager keeps it down."
"I don't think she much likes you, Val."
"She is welcome to dislike me," returned Val Elster.
CHAPTER VI.
AT THE BRIDGE.
The famous boat-race was postponed. Some of the competitors had discovered they should be the better for a few days' training, and the contest was fixed for the following Monday.
Not a day of the intervening week but sundry small cockle-shells—things the ladies had already begun to designate as the "wager-boats," each containing a gentleman occupant, exercising his arms on a pair of sculls—might be seen any hour passing and repassing on the water; and the green slopes of Hartledon, which here formed the bank of the river, grew to be tenanted with fair occupants. Of course they had their favourites, these ladies, and their little bets of gloves on them.
As the day for the contest drew near the interest became really exciting; and on the Saturday morning there was quite a crowd on the banks. The whole week, since Monday, had been most beautiful—calm, warm, lovely. Percival Elster, in his rather idle fashion, was not going to join in the contest: there were enough without him, he said.
He was standing now, talking to Anne. His face wore a sad expression, as she glanced up at him from beneath the white feather of her rather large-brimmed straw hat. Anne had been a great deal at Hartledon that week, and was as interested in the race as any of them, wearing Lord Hartledon's colours.
"How did you hear it, Anne?" he was asking.
"Mamma told me. She came into my room just now, and said there had been words."
"Well, it's true. The doctor took me to task exactly as he used to do when I was a boy. He said my course of life was sinful; and I rather fired up at that. Idle and useless it may be, but sinful it is not: and I said so. He explained that he meant that, and persisted in his assertion—that an idle, aimless, profitless life was a sinful one. Do you know the rest?"
"No," she faltered.
"He said he would give me to the end of the year. And if I were then still pursuing my present frivolous course of life, doing no good to myself or to anyone else, he should cancel the engagement. My darling, I see how this pains you."
She was suppressing her tears with difficulty. "Papa will be sure to keep his word, Percival. He is so resolute when he thinks he is right."
"The worst is, it's true. I do fall into all sorts of scrapes, and I have got out of money, and I do idle my time away," acknowledged the young man in his candour. "And all the while, Anne, I am thinking and hoping to do right. If ever I get set on my legs again, won't I keep on them!"
"But how many times have you said so before!" she whispered.
"Half the follies for which I am now paying were committed when I was but a boy," he said. "One of the men now visiting here, Dawkes, persuaded me to put my name to a bill for him for fifteen hundred pounds, and I had to pay it. It hampered me for years; and in the end I know I must have paid it twice over. I might have pleaded that I was under age when he got my signature, but it would have been scarcely honourable to do so."
"And you never profited by the transaction?"
"Never by a sixpence. It was done for Dawkes's accommodation, not mine. He ought to have paid it, you say? My dear,