The discussions held upon this question in the Colonel’s room were many. Mrs. Hayward had kept herself for many years out of society, rejecting it all the more sternly because she loved it and held all its little punctilios dear. And now that all necessity for such self-denial was over, to have everything risked again was terrible to her. She who had so carefully kept her husband from annoyance, in this matter departed from all her traditions. The good Colonel himself was fond of society too. He liked to know people, to gather kindly faces about him, and to be surrounded by a cheerful stir of human interests; but to tell the truth, he did not care very much about Lady St. Clair and the best people in the neighbourhood. It was seldom—very seldom—that it occurred to him to criticise his Elizabeth; but on this point he thought her a little mistaken, and not so infallible as she usually was.
‘Have patience a little, my dear,’ he said, falling upon a simple philosophy, which, indeed, he was not at all disposed himself to put in practice, ‘and you’ll see all will come right.’
‘Nothing will come right,’ said Mrs. Hayward, ‘unless we can get your daughter properly introduced. It alters everything in our position, Henry. We were settling down to society such as suits you and me; but that will not do now. The moment there is a young lady in the house all is changed. She must be thought of. A different kind of entertainment is wanted for a girl. I ought to take her to balls, and to water-parties, and to all sorts of gaieties. You would not like her to be left out.’
‘Well, my dear,’ said the Colonel, more cheerfully, ‘I like young faces, and I don’t object to a little dance now and then. I always, indeed, encouraged the young fellows in the regiment——’
‘If it were giving a dance that was all!—you may be sure I shouldn’t come to you about that. There is a great deal involved that is of much more importance. If it all gets abroad about your
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 daughter, everything will suffer—she in the first place. It will be like a governess—every one respects a governess——’
‘Surely, my dear. A good girl who perhaps does it to help her family, or support her old mother, or——’
‘Henry, my dear, you are very old-fashioned. But however good she may be, she is always at a disadvantage. It would be bad for us too. Colonel Hayward’s daughter a governess! They would say you were either less well off than you appeared, or that you had used her badly, or that I had used her badly—still more likely.’
‘But when we did not know of her very existence, Elizabeth!’
‘How are you to tell people that? The best thing is to keep quite quiet about it, if we only can. But now here is this new complication. These Bellendean people will talk it all over with the St. Clairs, and the St. Clairs will publish it everywhere. And people will be sorry for her, and pick her to pieces, and say it is easy to see she is unused to our world; they will be sorry for her for being with me, or else be sorry for me for being burdened with her.’
‘Elizabeth——’
‘And the worst is,’ she said vehemently, ‘that it will be quite true on both sides. She will be to be pitied, and I shall be to be pitied. If only these friends of hers could be kept quiet! If only she could be dressed properly, and taught to hold her tongue and say nothing about her past!’
The Colonel got up and began to walk about the room in great perturbation of spirit. He could not say, as he had been in the habit of saying, ‘If Elizabeth were but here!’ for it was Elizabeth herself—extraordinary fact!—who was the cause of the trouble. Social difficulties had not affected them till now; and what could he do or suggest in face of an emergency which was too much for Elizabeth? The poor gentleman was without resource, and he had a faint sense of injury, a feeling that he had never expected to be consulted or to have to advise in such a matter. All the difficulties in their way of a personal character had been Elizabeth’s business, not his. He walked about with a troubled brow, a face full of distress,—what could he do or say? It was almost cruel of her to consult him, to put matters which he had never pretended to be able to manage into his hands.
Mrs. Hayward, on her side, felt a faint gleam of alleviation in the midst of the gloom from the spectacle of the Colonel’s perturbation. It was his affair after all, and he had the best right to suffer; and though she expected no help from him, there was a
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 certain satisfaction and almost diversion in the depth of his helpless distress. They were, however, brought to a sudden standstill, which was a relief to both, by a ring at the door-bell, a very unusual thing in the morning. The clouds dispersed from Mrs. Hayward’s brow. She put up her hand instinctively to her cap. Agitation of any kind, though it may seem a remarkable effect, does derange one’s cap, as everybody who wears such a head-dress knows. ‘It can’t be any one coming to call at this hour,’ she said. ‘It must be some of your men intending to stay for lunch.’
A weight was lifted off the Colonel’s mind by this resumption of ordinary tones and subjects. He was always glad to see one of ‘his men,’ as Mrs. Hayward called them, to lunch, being of the most hospitable disposition; and it was his experience that the presence of a stranger was always perfectly efficacious in blowing away clouds that might arise on the family firmament. Besides, in the strained condition of family affairs, a third, or rather fourth party, who knew nothing about the circumstances, could not but make that meal more cheerful. They stood and listened for a moment while some one was evidently admitted, with some surprise that Baker did not appear to announce the visitor. Presently, however, the door was opened with that mixture of swiftness and hesitation which was characteristic of Joyce, and she herself looked in, more awakened and with a brighter countenance than either of the pair had yet seen in her. Her shyness had disappeared in the excitement of a pleasant surprise; her cheeks had got a little colour; the eager air which had struck Colonel Hayward when he first saw her, but which of late had been so much subdued, had returned to her eyes and sensitive mouth. ‘Oh, it’s the Captain!’ she said, with a sense of the importance of the announcement, as if she had been presenting the Prince of Wales at least, which changed the entire sentiment of her face. Mrs. Hayward had never before seen the natural Joyce as she was in the humility of her early undisturbed state. She acknowledged the charm of the girl with a keen little sudden pang of that appreciation and comprehension of jealousy, which is more clear-sighted and certain than love.
‘The Captain!’ she said, not quite aware who was meant, yet putting on an air of more ignorance than was genuine.
‘Oh, Bellendean!’ cried the Colonel, going forward with cordiality. ‘My dear fellow, how glad I am to see you! You’ve got away, then, from all your anxious friends. Elizabeth, you remember Captain Bellendean?’
‘I am not likely to have forgotten him,’ Mrs. Hayward said graciously, yet with a meaning which perhaps was not so gracious
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 as her speech. And there darted through her mind, as is so usual with women, a question, a calculation. Was it for Joyce? Men are so silly; who can tell how they may be influenced? There flashed through her a gleam of delight at the thought of thus getting rid of the interloper, and at the same time an angry grudge that this girl, who seemed to have all the luck, should come to such honour, and be thus set on high above so many who were her betters. All this in the twinkling of an eye. She stood for a minute or two and talked, asking the proper questions about his family, and when he came to town, and how long he meant to stay; then left the visitor with her husband, and hastened to say something about the luncheon to Baker, who on his part was lingering outside with a message from the cook. To those who feel an interest in such matters, we may say that Mrs. Hayward, when one of the Colonel’s men made his appearance unexpectedly for luncheon, generally added a dish of curry, for which her cook was noted (the men being almost all old Indians), to that meal.
When she returned to the drawing-room, Joyce was there, still with the same look of exhilaration and liveliness. She was even the first to speak—a singular circumstance. ‘I hope,’ she said, ‘I was not wrong in taking the Captain to the library. I thought, as you were not here, he would like that better than just talking to me.’
Was this false humility? or affectation? or what was it? ‘You were quite right, no doubt; for it must have been your father he came to see,’ said Mrs. Hayward, with a quick glance. She was prepared to see a conscious smile upon Joyce’s mouth, the little air of demure triumph with which a girl who knows herself the object of such a visit acquiesces in the fact that it is for her father. But no such consciousness was upon Joyce’s countenance. ‘You seem to be very much pleased to see him,’ she continued. ‘And why do you call him the Captain, as if there were not another in the world?’
Joyce paused a little before she answered. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that the people at Bellendean did think there was not another such Captain in the world.’
‘And you are glad to see him—because you know him so well? because he reminds you of your old life?’
Joyce grew red all at once with a blush, which surely meant something. Again she paused a little, with that sense of walking among snares and man-traps, which confuses the mind. ‘Oh no; I did not know him well. I have only spoken to him two or three times. It is so difficult to explain. You will perhaps not be
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 pleased if I say it. To me that am not accustomed—the Captain’s coming seemed like a great honour.’ She stopped short, and the colour went out of her face as suddenly as it came.
‘A great honour!’ cried Mrs. Hayward with indignation,—‘to his commanding officer!’ It was all she could do to keep her temper. Her foot patted the carpet angrily, and she tore a band of calico off a piece upon her lap with vehemence, as if she were inflicting pain and liked to do so. ‘What an extraordinary notion!’ she cried. ‘Norman Bellendean, a little Scotch squire—that anybody should think his visit an honour to my husband!’ There was a sort of subdued fury in her laugh of scorn.
‘I can see,’ said Joyce, ‘it was very silly to say that; and it was only a sort of instinct. I forgot when I saw him—all that has happened—and that I was a—different creature.’
‘Joyce,’ cried Mrs. Hayward quickly, ‘I warn you that unless you can get over this constant going back upon your old life, and try and adapt yourself to your present circumstances, it will be impossible for us—impossible for me—almost beyond any one’s powers——’
Joyce had become very pale. She did not make any reply, but waited with her lips moving in an eagerness so different from that joyous eagerness of her former aspect, for the next word that should be said. What was it that would be impossible? There is something in a threat which rouses the most placid blood. If it was impossible, what would happen? Joyce was in no way in fault; the circumstances which had changed her life, and transplanted her from her home, were not of her creating any more than they were of Mrs. Hayward’s. But Mrs. Hayward said nothing more. She went on tearing, wounding, cutting her calico with stabs and thrusts of the scissors that seemed as if they must draw blood. But she had gone as far as could be done unintentionally by sudden impulse—which, and no set............