No One Can Tell What May Come to Pass

Then Lord Silverbridge necessarily went down to Matching, knowing that he must meet Mabel Grex.  Why should she have prolonged her visit?  No doubt it might have been very pleasant for her to be his father’s guest at Matching, but she had been there above a month!  He could understand that his father should ask her to remain.  His father was still brooding over that foolish communication which had been made to him on the night of the dinner at the Beargarden.  His father was still intending to take Mabel to his arms as a daughter-in-law.  But Lady Mabel herself knew that it could not be so!  The whole truth had been told to her.  Why should she remain at Matching for the sake of being mixed up in a scene the acting of which could not fail to be disagreeable to her?

He found the house very quiet and nearly empty.  Mrs Finn was there with the two girls, and Mr Warburton had come back.  Miss Cassewary had gone to a brother’s house.  Other guests to make Christmas merry there were none.  As he looked round at the large rooms he reflected that he himself was there only for a special purpose.  It was his duty to break the news of his intended marriage to his father.  As he stood before the fire, thinking how best he might do this, it occurred to him that a letter from a distance would have been the ready and simple way.  But then it had occurred to him also, when at a distance, that a declaration of his purpose face to face was the simplest and readiest way.  If you have to go headlong into the water you should take your plunge without hesitating.  So he told himself, making up his mind that he would have it all out that evening.

At dinner Lady Mabel sat next to his father, and he could watch the special courtesy with which the Duke treated the girl who he was so desirous of introducing to his house.  Silverbridge could not talk about the election of Polpenno because all conversation about Tregear was interdicted by the presence of his sister.  He could say nothing as to the Runnymede hunt and the two thunderbolts which had fallen on him, as Major Tifto was not a subject on which he could expatiate in the presence of his father.  He asked a few questions about the shooting, and referred with great regret to his absence from the Brake country.

‘I am sure Mr Cassewary could spare you for another fortnight,’ the Duke said to his neighbour, alluding to a visit which she now intended to make.

‘If so he would have to spare me altogether,’ said Mabel, ’for I must meet my father in London in the middle of January.’

‘Could you not put it off for another year?’

‘You would think I had taken root and was growing at Matching.’

’Of all our products you would be the most delightful, and the most charming,—­and we would hope the most permanent,’ said the courteous Duke.

’After being here so long I need hardly say that I like Matching better than any place in the world.  I suppose it is the contrast to Grex.’