‘You must try and get her to tell you when you are out this morning,’ said Mrs. Hayward. ‘She is probably silent on account of me; but you are her father, and you ought to know.’
‘My dear,’ said the Colonel, ‘why should she be silent on account of you?’
‘Oh, we need not enter into that question, Henry. Get her to tell you; it will be a relief to her own mind when she has got it out.’
‘Perhaps, Elizabeth, after all, we are going too fast. Bellendean has always been very friendly. He came to see me, and sought me out as his old colonel, before there was any Joyce.’
‘So you think it’s for you!’ Mrs. Hayward cried. And then she added severely, ‘If we should be going too fast, and there has been no explanation, Henry, you must bring him to book.’
‘Bring him to book? I don’t know what you mean, Elizabeth,’ said the Colonel, with a troubled countenance.
‘You must not allow it to go on—you must put a stop to it—you must let him know that you can’t have your daughter trifled with. You must ask him his intentions, Henry.’
The Colonel’s countenance fell: he grew pale, and horror filled his eyes. ‘Ask him—his intentions! his intentions! Good Lord! I might shoot him if you like; but ask him—his intentions towards my daughter, Elizabeth! Good Lord!’ The Colonel grew red all over, and panted for want of breath. ‘You don’t know what you say.’
‘I—don’t know what I say? As good men as you have had to do it, Henry. You must not let a man come here and trifle with Joyce. Joyce must not be——’
‘I wish you would not bring in her name,’ cried the old soldier—‘a young woman’s name! I know what you say is for—for
{253}
 our good, Elizabeth; but I can’t, indeed I can’t—it’s not possible. I ask a man—as if I meant to force him into—— My dear, you can’t know what that means; you can’t say what you’re thinking. I to put shame upon my own child!’ The Colonel walked up and down the room in the greatest perturbation. ‘I can’t—I can’t!’ he said; ‘you must never think of such a thing again. I—Elizabeth! Good Lord——!’ He stopped. ‘My dear, I beg your pardon. I don’t mean to be profane—but to tell me—oh, good Lord!’ the Colonel cried, feeling that no words were adequate to express the horror and incongruity of the suggestion.
Mrs. Hayward had stood watching him without any relaxation of her look. There was a certain vulgar fibre in her which was not moved by that incongruity. A faint disdain of his incapacity, and still more of his delicacy about his daughter’s name, as if she were of more importance than any one else, was visible in her face. Who was Joyce that she was not to be warned, that her lover was not to be brought to book? Mrs. Hayward, in that perpetual secret antagonism which was in her mind, though she disapproved of it and suffered from it, was more vulgar than her nature. She was ready to scoff at these prejudices about Joyce, though in her natural mind she would have herself shielded a young woman’s name from every breath.
‘I am speaking in Joyce’s interests,’ she said. ‘I hope you don’t want to break her heart.’
‘Elizabeth, Elizabeth!’ said the Colonel, ‘I beseech you, don’t talk like that. Why, you can’t know, you can’t, you don’t realise what a girl is to a man, especially when he is her father. It’s bad enough to think of her caring for one of those fellows at all; but to break her heart—good Lord!—and for me to interfere, to call up a man to—to the scratch—to—— Oh, good Lord, good Lord!’ cried Colonel Hayward, with a blush like a girl. ‘I might shoot him and take the penalty, but you might as well ask me to—to shoot myself at once—as to do that: or to acknowledge that my child, that young creature, my Joyce——’
‘You can’t expect me to follow you in your raptures, Henry,’ said his wife, sitting down at the breakfast-table, for this discussion had been held in the morning, before Joyce appeared: and at that moment the door opened and she came in, putting a stop to the conversation. She was paler than usual, and graver; but the two were confused by her entrance, and for the moment so much taken up in concealing their own embarrassment, that they did not remark her looks. Joyce was very quiet, but she was not
{254}
 unhappy. How could she be with the thrill of Norman Bellendean’s voice still in her ears, and his last look, which meant so much, so clear before her? She was wrong, she was guilty; it might be that misery and shame should be her portion. She knew that she had failed to honour, if not to love, and that her way before her was very dark; but do what she would, Joyce could not force herself to be unhappy now. The first thing that had occurred to her when she opened her eyes upon the morning light was not any breach of faith or failure in duty, but that voice and those eyes with their revelation which made her heart bound out of all the shadows of the night. She was pale with all this agitation, uneasy even when she slept, distracted by spectres; but in the morning light she could not be wretched, however she tried. She was very quiet, however, much more so than usual; and the absence of that eager vitality which kept continual light and shadow on her sensitive face gave her a certain dignity, which was again enhanced by her complete unconsciousness of it. Her father cast a glance at her in this composed stateliness of aspect, and had to hasten away to the sideboard and cut at the ham to hide the horrified shame of his countenance. A creature like that to break her heart for any fellow! to be called upon to ask any man his intentions—his intentions—in respect to her! The Colonel hewed down the ham till his wife had to remonstrate. ‘You are not cutting for a dozen people, Henry.’ ‘Oh, I beg your pardon my dear,’ he cried, and came back to his seat very shamefaced with a small solitary slice upon his plate.
When the Colonel went out for his usual walk, with Joyce as his companion, Mrs. Hayward came after them to the door, and laid her hand significantly on her husband’s shoulder. ‘Now don’t forget,’ she said. Forget! as if he were likely to forget what weighed upon him like a mountain. He thought to himself that he would put off any allusion till the walk was half over; but the Colonel had not the skill nor the self-control to do this, the uneasy importance of his looks betraying something of his commission even to the dreamy eyes of Joyce. Had she been fully awake and aroused, she must have seen through all his innocent devices at the first glance.
‘It was rather a pleasant party, yesterday,’ he said, ‘especially afterwards, when we were by ourselves.’ The Colonel meant no bull, but had lost himself in a confusion of words.
‘Yes,’ said Joyce very sedately, without even a smile.
‘By the way,’ said the Colonel briskly, seizing the first means of avoiding for a little longer the evil moment, ‘you did great
{255}
 execution, Joyce. I don’t know what you said to the Canon, my dear, but I think you accomplished in a minute what all the good people have been trying to do for weeks and weeks. What did you say?’
What did she say? She gave her father a wondering look. Who was the Canon, it seemed to ask, and when was yesterday? It looked a century ago.
‘That is what I like to see a woman do,’ cried the Colonel, rousing himself into enthusiasm for the sake of gaining a little time—‘not making any show, but with a word of hers showing what’s kind and right, and getting people to do it. That’s what I like to see. You have done your friends the best turn they ever had done them in their life.’
‘Was it so?’ said Joyce, with a faint smile. ‘I am very glad; but it was the Canon that was good to pay attention to the like of me.’
‘The like of you!’ cried the Colonel. ‘I don’t know the man that wouldn’t pay attention to the like of............