CHAPTER V.

Christmas-Day was strange and sad.  Mrs. Buxton had always contrived to be in the drawing-room, ready to receive them all after dinner.  Mr. Buxton tried to do away with his thoughts of her by much talking; but every now and then he looked wistfully toward the door.  Erminia exerted herself to be as lively as she could, in order, if possible, to fill up the vacuum.  Edward, who had come over from Woodchester for a walk, had a good deal to say; and was, unconsciously, a great assistance with his never-ending flow of rather clever small-talk.  His mother felt proud of her son, and his new waistcoat, which was far more conspicuously of the latest fashion than Frank’s could be said to be.  After dinner, when Mr. Buxton and the two young men were left alone, Edward launched out still more.  He thought he was impressing Frank with his knowledge of the world, and the world’s ways.  But he was doing all in his power to repel one who had never been much attracted toward him.  Worldly success was his standard of merit.  The end seemed with him to justify the means; if a man prospered, if was not necessary to scrutinize his conduct too closely.  The law was viewed in its lowest aspect; and yet with a certain cleverness, which preserved Edward from being intellectually contemptible.  Frank had entertained some idea of studying for a barrister himself:  not so much as a means of livelihood as to gain some idea of the code which makes and shows a nation’s conscience:  but Edward’s details of the ways in which the letter so often baffles the spirit, made him recoil.  With some anger against himself, for viewing the profession with disgust, because it was degraded by those who embraced it, instead of looking upon it as what might be ennobled and purified into a vast intelligence by high and pure-minded men, he got up abruptly and left the room.

The girls were sitting over the drawing-room fire, with unlighted candles on the table, talking, he felt, about his mother; but when he came in they rose, and changed their tone.  Erminia went to the piano, and sang her newest and choicest French airs.  Frank was gloomy and silent; but when she changed into more solemn music his mood was softened, Maggie’s simple and hearty admiration, untinged by the slightest shade of envy for Erminia’s accomplishments, charmed him.  The one appeared to him the perfection of elegant art, the other of graceful nature.  When he looked at Maggie, and thought of the moorland home from which she had never wandered, the mysteriously beautiful lines of Wordsworth seemed to become sun-clear to him.

  “And she shall lean her ear
  In many a secret place
  Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
  And beauty born of murmuring sound
  Shall pass into her face.”