CHAPTER IV.

HOW THE HEART OF MAURICE GREW HOT WITHIN HIM, AND HOW HE PUT THE QUESTION TO THE TOUCH, AND HOW HE NEITHER LOST NOR WON.

Mrs. Bethune, sauntering slowly between the bushes laden with exquisite blooms, all white and red and yellow, looks up as he approaches her with a charming start.

“You!” she says, smiling, and holding out her hand—­a large hand but beautiful.  “It is my favourite spot.  But that you should have come here too!”

“You knew I should come!” returns he gravely.  Something in her charming air of surprise jars upon him at this moment.  Why should she pretend?—­and to him!

“I knew?”

“You told me you were coming here.”

“Ah, what a lovely answer!” says she, with a glance from under her long lashes, that—­whatever her answer may be—­certainly is lovely.

Rylton regards her moodily.  If she really loved him, would she coquet with him like this—­would she so pretend?  All in a second, as he stands looking at her, the whole of the past year comes back to him.  A strange year, fraught with gladness and deep pain—­with fears and joys intense!  What had it all meant?  If anything, it had meant devotion to her—­to his cousin, who, widowed, all but penniless, had been flung by the adverse winds of Fate into his home.

She was the only daughter of Lady Rylton’s only brother, and the latter had taken her in, and in a measure adopted her.  It was a strange step for her to take—­for one so little led by kindly impulses, or rather for one who had so few kindly impulses to be led by; but everyone has a soft spot somewhere in his heart, and Lady Rylton had loved her brother, good-for-nothing as he was.  There might have been a touch of remorse, too, in her charity; she had made Marian’s marriage!

Grudgingly, coldly, she opened her son’s doors to her niece, but still she opened them.  She was quite at liberty to do this, as Maurice was seldom at home, and gave her always carte blanche to do as she would with all that belonged to him.  She made Marian Bethune’s life for the first few months a burden to her, and then Marian Bethune, who had waited, took the reins in a measure; at all events, she made herself so useful to Lady Rylton that the latter could hardly get on without her.

Maurice had fallen in love with her almost at once; insensibly but thoroughly.  There had been an hour in which he had flung himself, metaphorically, at her feet (one never does the real thing now, because it spoils one’s trousers so), and offered his heart, and all the fortune still left to him after his mother’s reign; and Marian had refused it all, very tenderly, very sympathetically, very regretfully—­to tell the truth—­but she had refused it.