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And there was a curious simplicity in her unconsciousness, and in her attitude, which made her seem almost girlish from a little distance. "There's Mrs. Chepstow," said a man at the next table to Armine's, bending over to his companion, a stout and florid specimen from the City. "And absolutely alone, by Jove!" "Couldn't get even a kid from Sandhurst to-night, I s'pose," returned the other.
He heard all Armine's fallen castles about chapels, schools, curates, and sisters, as in a dream, really not knowing whether they were or were not to be. And with all his desire to be useful, he never perceived the one offer that would have been really valuable, namely, to carry off the boy out of sight of the scene of his disappointment.
He was like a child hovering near, and constantly looking to assure himself of the reality of some precious acquisition. Later in the evening, on his way from the night-school, he was at the door again to leave a parish magazine with a list of services that ought to have rejoiced Armine's heart, if he had felt capable of enjoying anything at St.
Jock was sufficiently tired to be quiescent in the nursery, where she kept him with her, feeling, in his wistful eyes, and even in poor little Armine's childish questions, something less like blank desolation than her recent apathy had been, as if she were waking to thrills of pain after the numbness of a blow.
Miss Grandi-son looked forward almost with as much pleasure to being Lady Armine's daughter as her son's bride. The intended mother-in-law was in turn as warmhearted as her niece was engaging; and eventually Lady Armine loved Katherine for herself alone.
Armine's ears had grown accustomed to these voices, so accustomed to them that it was already becoming difficult to her to realize that but a short time ago she had never heard them, never felt their curious influence, their driving power, which, mingled with other powers of sun and air, flogs the souls of men and women into desire of ungentle joys and of sometimes cruel pleasures.
And so, though the choir did have at least half Armine's share of the price of "Marco's Felucca," he threw himself most heartily into the Christmas party, was the poet of the versified charade, acted the strong-minded woman who was the chief character in "Blue Bell;" and he and Jock gained universal applause. Allen hardly appeared at the party.
Armine's spirit fell under the spell, and he moved dreamily on, hardly attending to Jock, who was running on with Chico, and alarming him by feints of catching him and throwing him into the water.
"Then Jock's name is John Lucas, and we did mean to call him by the second, but it wouldn't stick. Names won't sometimes, and there's a formality in Lucas that would never fit that skipjack of a boy. He got called Jock as a nickname, and now he will abide by it. But Joseph Armine's second name does fit him, and so we have kept to it; and Barbara was dear grandmamma's own name, and quite our own."
His mother was not happy about it, she never would be quite easy as to Armine's roughing it at any chance school, and she had much rather he had spent the intervening year in working as a lay assistant to Mr. Ogilvie, who had promised to give him a title for Orders, and would direct his reading. Armine, however, said he could neither make himself Mr.
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