LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER IX.

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      Lady Caroline Torrance was in her morning-room with her children when her husband came to tell her of his visit to Dalrulzian. He had kept it for twenty-four hours, in order to have an opportunity of telling it at his leisure, and making it as disagreeable to her as possible; for indeed he was fully convinced in his own mind that John had been the man about whom his broken-hearted bride had made a confession to him. The confession had not disarmed or moved him to generosity: not that his delicacy was wounded by the thought of his wife's engagement to some one else before she saw him—no such fantastical reason moved him; but that he was furious at the thought that this unseen personage still remained agreeable to her, and that in secret she could retire upon the recollection of some one whom she had once preferred, or perhaps did now prefer, to himself. This was insupportable to him. He did not care very much for filling her heart himself; but he meant that she should belong to him utterly, and not at all, even in imagination or by a passing thought, to anybody else. Lady Car's morning-room was the last of a gorgeous but faded suite of rooms opening off the drawing-room, from which it was separated by heavy velvet curtains. Everything was heavy and grand even in this sanctuary, where it was supposed the lady of the house was to find her refuge when no longer on duty, so to speak—no longer bound to sit in state and receive her visitors. It was furnished like the rest, with gilded chairs, a table of Florentine mosaic, and curtains of ruby velvet, looped and puckered into what the upholsterer of the late Mrs. Torrance's time thought the most elegant and sumptuous fashion. The gilding was a little tarnished, the velvet faded; but still it was too fine for anything less than a royal habitation. It is supposed that princesses, being used to it, like to knock their elbows against ormolu ornaments, and to put down their thimbles and scissors (if they ever use such vulgar implements) upon marble; but poor Lady Car did not. She was chilly by nature, and she never had got over her horror of these additional chillinesses. The Florentine marble made her shiver. It was far too fine to have a cover over it, which she had ventured once to suggest, to her husband's horror. "What! cover it up, as if it were plain mahogany—a thing that was worth no one could tell how much!" So she gave it up, and shivered all the more. It was a chilly day of May, which the fresh foliage outside, and a deceitful sun not strong enough to neutralise the east wind, made only a little less genial, and Lady Car sat very close to the fire, in a chair as little gilt as could be found, and with a little table beside her covered with a warm and heavy cover, as if to make up for the naked coldness of the rest. The room had three large windows, looking, from the platform upon which the house stood, over the wide country—a great landscape full of greening fields and foliage, and an infinite blue and white sky, the blue somewhat pale but very clear, the clouds mounting in Alpine peaks into the far distance and lying along the horizon in long lines. The windows, it need not be said, were plate-glass, so that an impression of being out of doors and exposed to the full keenness of the breeze was conveyed to the mind. How often had poor Lady Car sat and shivered, looking over that wistful sweep of distance in her loneliness, and knowing that no one could ever come out of it who would bring joy to her or content! She had never been beautiful, the reader is aware. She was plain now, in the absence of all that sunshine and happiness which beautifies and brightens homely faces. And yet her face was not a homely face. The master of Tinto had got what he wanted—a woman whose appearance could never be overlooked, or whom, any one could undervalue. Her air was full of natural distinction though she had no beauty. Her slight, pliant figure, like a long sapling bending before every breeze, had a grace of gentle yielding which did not look like weakness; and her smile, if perhaps a little timid, was winning and gracious. But her nose and her upper lip were both too long, and the pretty wavering colour she had possessed in her youth was gone altogether. Ill-natured people called her sallow; and indeed, though it is not a pretty word, it was not, at this stage of her existence, far from the truth.

      Her two children were playing beside her on the carpet. Poor lady! here was perhaps the worst circumstance in her hard lot. As if it were not enough to be compelled to take Pat Torrance for her husband, it had been her melancholy fate to bring other Torrances, all his in temper and feature, into the world. This is an aggravation of which nobody would have thought. In imagination we are all glad to find a refuge for an unhappy wife in her children, whom instinctively we allot to her as the natural compensation—creatures like herself and belonging to her, although the part in them of the obnoxious father cannot be ignored. But here the obnoxious father was all in all; even the baby of two years old on the rug at her feet, the little girl who by all laws ought to have been like her mother, showed in her little dark countenance as small relationship to Lady Caroline as to any stranger. They were their father's children: they had his black hair, a peculiarity which sometimes is extremely piquant and attractive in childhood, giving an idea of unusual development; but, on the other hand, sometimes is—not. Little Tom and Edie were of those to whom it is not attractive, for they had heavy fat cheeks, and the same light, large, projecting eyes which were so marked a feature in their father's face. Poor Lady Car thought they fixed their eyes upon her with a cynical gaze when she tried to sing to them—to tell them baby-stories. She tried her best, but that was perhaps too fine for these children of a coarser race. They scrambled down from her lap, and liked better to roll upon the floor or break with noisy delight the toys which were showered upon them, leaving the poor young mother to gaze and wonder, and feel as much rebuffed as if these two infants of two and three had been twenty years older. They screamed with delight when their father tossed them up in his arms, but they escaped from their mother's knee when she would have coaxed them to quiet. Poor Lady Car! they were a wonder and perplexity to her. She was half afraid of them though they were her own.

      Torrance had come in from the woods, which he had been inspecting with his forester, and perhaps something had crossed him in this inspection, for he was a tyrant by nature, and could not tolerate a contrary opinion; whereas the officials, so to speak, of a great estate in Scotland, are much given to opinions, and by no means to be persuaded to relinquish them. The forester had objected to something the master suggested, and the agent had taken the forester's part. The master of Tinto came in fuming. To give in was a thing intolerable to him, and to give in to his own servant! But here was another servant whom he need not fear bullying, who could not throw up her situation and put him to inconvenience, who was forced to put up with as much indignity as he chose to put upon

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