The weather was altogether favourable for the thirty-mile drive. The wagonette with its scratch team and a couple of smart grooms, was at the Homestead gate at ten o’clock, and after picking up Miss Wendover and her companion, went on to The Knoll for Bessie and Blanche, and then to Dr. Rylance’s for Urania, who had accepted the invitation most graciously. Kingthorpe was unwontedly excited by this gorgeous apparition, and the inhabitants remained at garden gates and cottage doors while so much as a horse’s tail was visible. Everybody was pleased to see the young squire driving four-in-hand. It had been supposed that as a bookish young man, given over to Greek and Latin, he must needs be a poor hand with horses. But this morning’s exhibition gave rise to more hopeful views.
‘We shall see the squire setting up his coach, and settling down at the Abbey,’ said one.
‘Ay, when he gets married,’ said another; ‘that’s what’ll settle he. I believes as him is sweet on that young ‘ooman at the Homestead. Her be a clipper, her be.’
Over the hills and far away went the scratch team — a little fresh, but behaving beautifully. Aunt Betsy sat beside her nephew, and watched his coachmanship with a jealous eye, conscious that she could have kept the team better in hand herself, but still with moderate approval. The girls and the grooms were in the back of the vehicle — Bessie, Blanche, and Ida full of talk and merriment, Urania thoughtful. This day’s entertainment was too much in Ida’s honour to be pleasant to Miss Rylance; yet she could not deny herself the painful privilege of being there. She wanted to see what happened — how far Mr. Wendover was disposed to make an idiot of himself. She saw more than enough in the glances of the charioteer, when he turned to talk to the girls behind him — now to point out some feature in the landscape, now to ask some idle question, but always with looks that lingered upon one face, and that face was Ida Palliser’s.
It was a long cross country drive, by rustic lanes and dubious roads, but Mr. Wendover took things easily. He had sent forward a second scratch team over night to a village half way, and here they changed horses, while he and his party spent half an hour pleasantly enough exploring an old gray church and humble graveyard, where the tombstones all bore record of unrenowned lives that had slowly rusted away in a pastoral solitude, Blanche, whose schoolroom appetite was wont to damp its keen edge upon bread and butter at this hour, felt it rather a hard thing that no one proposed a light refection at the lowly inn; but she bore her inward gnawings in silence, conscious of the dignity of a frock which almost reached her ankles, and desirous to prove that she was worthy to be the associate of grown-up.
Half way between this village inn and Wimperfield they met a couple of horsemen. These were no other than Sir Vernon and his brother Peter, who had come to meet their guests, and show them the nearest way, which from this point became especially intricate.
Brian walked his team gently up a gentle hill, while Sir Vernon and his brother walked their horses beside him, and during this ascent all necessary introductions were duly made, everybody being properly presented except Blanche, who felt that she was being treated with contumely.
‘I am very glad to see you at last, cousin Ida,’ said Sir Vernon, pleasantly. ‘I have been hearing of you all my life, but we seemed fated not to meet.’
He was a fine, broad-shouldered young fellow, with a frank, fresh-coloured countenance, auburn whiskers, and curly brown hair. His brother was after the same pattern, hair a little lighter, no whiskers, eyes rather a brighter blue. They were as much alike as brothers can be without being mistaken for each other. There was nothing romantic looking about either of them, Bessie thought, regretfully. She would have liked Sir Vernon to have resembled her favourite hero in fiction (the man she always put in confession books), and to have fallen desperately in love with Ida at first sight. And here he was, a most matter-of-fact looking young man, riding behind the wagonette in a provokingly matter-of-fact way.
Yet perhaps there was a providence in this; for if Brian of the Abbey were in love with Ida, as Bessie shrewdly suspected, it would have been a terrible thing for him to have found a rival in a titled cousin. If Ida were ambitious, the title might have turned the scale.
‘And I have so set my heart upon having her for my cousin, thought Bessie. ‘The other Brian was a failure, but this Brian may win the prize.’
Mr. Jardine had not been able to leave his parish for a long day; so Bessie had plenty of leisure to speculate upon the possible loves of other people, instead of enjoying the blissfulness of her own love affair.
Wimperfield was a mansion built in the Italian manner which prevailed about a century ago, a style about as uninteresting as any order of domestic architecture, but which makes a house a good feature in a fine landscape. The Corinthian fa?ade of Wimperfield stood boldly out against the verdant slope of a hill, backed and sheltered on either side by woods. Behind that classic portico there was the usual prim range of windows, and there were the usual barrack-like rooms. The furniture was of the same heavy and substantial character, rich dark rosewood, amber satin hangings faded by a quarter of a century; Spanish mahogany in dining-rooms and bedrooms; Gillow’s fine workmanship everywhere, but the style dating back to the very infancy of that ancient house.
The large, finely-lighted hall, which looked like the vestibule of some learned institute, was adorned with four Carrara marble statues, placid gods and goddesses smirking at vacancy, on pedestals of verde antico. The only pictures in the reception-rooms were family portraits, and a few of those large Dutch landscapes, battle scenes, sea-pieces and fruit-pieces, which cry aloud that they are furniture pictures, and have been bought to fit the panelling of the rooms.
But for its noble situation this temple of English domestic life would have been utterly without charm; but the situation was superb, the gardens were in beautiful order, and the stables, as Aunt Betsy declared after personal inspection, were perfect.
Sir Vernon did the honours of his house in a frank, friendly manner. He took his guests round the gardens and stables, showed Ida the old nursery in which his father and her father had spent their infancy; the gun-room in which their first guns were carefully preserved; the very rocking............