CHAPTER 53

Then I am as Proud as a Queen

During the next day or two the shooting went on without much interruption from love-making.  The love-making was not prosperous all round.  Poor Lady Mary had nothing to comfort her.  Could she have been allowed to see the letter which her lover had written to her father, the comfort would have been, if not ample, still very great.  Mary told herself again and again that she was quite sure of Tregear;—­but it was hard upon her that she could not be made certain that her certainty was well grounded.  Had she known that Tregear had written, though she had not seen a word of the letter, it would have comforted her.  But she heard nothing of the letter.  In June last she had seen him, by chance, for a few minutes, in Lady Mabel’s drawing-room.  Since that she had not heard from him or of him.  That was now more than five months since.  How could love serve her,—­how could her very life serve her, if things were to go on like that?  How was she to bear it?  Thinking of this she resolved, she almost resolved, that she would go boldly to her father and desire that she might be given up to her lover.

Her brother, although more triumphant,—­for how could he fail to triumph after such words as Isabel had spoken to him,—­still felt his difficulties very seriously.  She had imbued him with a strong sense of her own firmness, and she had declared that she would go away and leave him altogether if the Duke should be unwilling to receive her.  He knew that the Duke would be unwilling.  The Duke, who certainly was not handy in those duties of match-making which seemed to have fallen upon him at the death of his wife, showed by a hundred little signs his anxiety that his son and heir should arrange his affairs with Lady Mabel.  These signs were manifest to Mary,—­were disagreeably manifest to Silverbridge,—­and were unfortunately manifest to Lady Mabel herself.  They were manifest to Mrs Finn, who was clever enough to perceive that the inclinations of the young heir were turned in another direction.  And gradually they became manifest to Isabel Boncassen.  The host himself, as host, was courteous to all his guests.  They had been of his own selection, and he did his best to make himself pleasant to them all.  But he selected two for his peculiar notice,—­and those two were Miss Boncassen and Lady Mabel.  While he would himself walk, and talk, and argue after his own particular fashion with the American beauty,—­explaining to her matters political and social, till he persuaded her to promise to read his pamphlet upon decimal coinage,—­he was always making efforts to throw Silverbridge and Lady Mabel together.  The two girls saw it and knew how the matter was,—­knew that they were rivals, and knew each the ground on which she herself and on which the other stood.  But neither was satisfied with her advantage, or nearly satisfied.  Isabel would not take the prize without the Duke’s