She pretended not to hear him, and whipped up her horse to a smart trot. The white steed being no trotter, Parker followed at a lumbering canter. Alice, possessed by a shamefaced fear that he was making her ridiculous, soon checked her speed; and the white horse subsided to a walk, marking its paces by deliberate bobs of its unfashionably long mane and tail.
“I have something to tell you,” said Parker at last.
Alice did not deign to reply.
“I think it better to let you know at once,” he continued. “The fact is, I intend to marry Janet.”
“Janet won’t,” said Alice, promptly, retorting first, and then reflecting on the intelligence, which surprised her more than it pleased her.
Parker smiled conceitedly, and said, “I don’t think she will raise any difficulty if you give her to understand that it is all over between US.”
“That what is all over?”
“Well, if you prefer it, that there never has been anything between us. Janet believes that we were engaged. So did a good many other people until you went into high life.”
“I cannot help what people thought.”
“And they all know that I, at least, was ready to perform my part of the engagement honorably.”
“Wallace,” she said, with a sudden change of tone; “I think we had better separate. It is not right for me to be riding about the park with you when I have nobody belonging to me here except a manservant.”
“Just as you please,” he said, coolly, halting. “May I assure Janet that you wish her to marry me?”
“Most certainly not. I do not wish anyone to marry you, much less my own sister. I am far inferior to Janet; and she deserves a much better husband than I do.”
“I quite agree with you, though I don’t quite see what that has to do with it. As far as I understand you, you will neither marry me yourself — mind, I am quite willing to fulfil my engagement still — nor let any one else have me. Is that so?”
“You may tell Janet,” said Alice, vigorously, her face glowing, “that if we — you and I — were condemned to live forever on a desert isl — No; I will write to her. That will be the best way. Good-morning.”
Parker, hitherto imperturbable, now showed signs of alarm. “I beg, Alice,” he said, “that you will say nothing unfair to her of me. You cannot with truth say anything bad of me.”
“Do you really care for Janet?” said Alice, wavering.
“Of course,” he replied, indignantly. “Janet is a very superior girl.”
“I have always said so,” said Alice, rather angry because some one else had forestalled her with the meritorious admission. “I will tell her the simple truth — that there has never been anything between us except what is between all cousins; and that there never could have been anything more on my part. I must go now. I don’t know what that man must think of me already.”
“I should be sorry to lower you in his esteem,” said Parker, maliciously. “Goodbye, Alice.” Uttering the last words in a careless tone, he again pulled up the white horse’s head, raised his hat, and sped away. It was not true that he was in the habit of riding in the park every season. He had learned from Janet that Alice was accustomed to ride there in the forenoon; and he had hired the white horse in order to meet her on equal terms, feeling that a gentleman on horseback in the road by the Serpentine could be at no social disadvantage with any lady, however exalted her associates.
As for Alice, she went home with his reminder that Miss Carew was her patron rankling in her. The necessity for securing an independent position seemed to press imminently upon her. And as the sole way of achieving this was by marriage, she felt for the time willing to marry any man, without regard to his person, age, or disposition, if only he could give her a place equal to that of Miss Carew in the world, of which she had lately acquired the manners and customs.
CHAPTER XII
When the autumn set in, Alice was in Scotland learning to shoot; and Lydia was at Wiltstoken, preparing her father’s letters and memoirs for publication. She did not write at the castle, all the rooms in which were either domed, vaulted, gilded, galleried, three-sided, six-sided, anything except four-sided, or in some way suggestive of the “Arabian Nights’ Entertainments,” and out of keeping with the associations of her father’s life. In her search for a congruous room to work in, the idea of causing a pavilion to be erected in the elm vista occurred to her. But she had no mind to be disturbed just then by the presence of a troop of stonemasons, slaters, and carpenters, nor any time to lose in waiting for the end of their operations. So she had the Warren Lodge cleansed and lime washed, and the kitchen transformed into a comfortable library, where, as she sat facing the door at her writing-table, in the centre of the room, she could see the elm vista through one window and through another a tract of wood and meadow land intersected by the highroad and by a canal, beyond which the prospect ended in a distant green slope used as a sheep run. The other apartments were used by a couple of maid-servants, who kept the place well swept and dusted, prepared Miss Carew’s lunch, answered her bell, and went on her errands to the castle; and, failing any of these employments, sat outside in the sun, reading novels. When Lydia had worked in this retreat daily for two months her mind became so full of the old life with her father that the interruptions of the servants often recalled her to the present with a shock. On the twelfth of August she was bewildered for a moment when Phoebe, one of the maids, entered and said,
“If you please, miss, Bashville is wishful to know can he speak to you a moment?”
Permission being given, Bashville entered. Since his wrestle with Cashel he had never quite recovered his former imperturbability. His manner and speech were as smooth and respectful as before, but his countenance was no longer steadfast; he was on bad terms with the butler because he had been reproved by him for blushing. On this occasion he came to beg leave to absent himself during the afternoon. He seldom asked favors of this kind, and was of course never refused.
“The road is quite thronged to-day,” she observed, as he thanked her. “Do you know why?”
“No, madam,” said Bashville, and blushed.
“People begin to shoot on the twelfth,” she said; “but I suppose it cannot have anything to do with that. Is there a race, or a fair, or any such thing in the neighborhood?”
“Not that I am aware of, madam.”
Lydia dipped her pen in the ink and thought no more of the subject. Bashville returned to the castle, attired himself like a country gentleman of sporting tastes, and went out to enjoy his holiday.
The forenoon passed away peacefully. There was no sound in the Warren Lodge except the scratching of Lydia’s pen, the ticking of her favorite skeleton clock, an occasional clatter of crockery from the kitchen, and the voices of the birds and maids without. The hour for lunch approached, and Lydia became a little restless. She interrupted her work to look at the clock, and brushed a speck of dust from its dial with the feather of her quill. Then she looked absently through the window along the elm vista, where she had once seen, as she had thought, a sylvan god. This time she saw a less romantic object — a policeman. She looked again, incredulously, there he was still, a blackbearded, helmeted man, making a dark blot in the green perspective, and surveying the landscape cautiously. Lydia rang the bell, and bade Phoebe ask the man what he wanted.
The girl soon returned out of breath, with the news that there were a dozen more constables hiding in the road, and that the one she had spoken to had given no account of himself, but had asked her how many gates there were to the park; whether they were always locked, and