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And I can only regard a marriage between my son and yourself as undesirable not only for my son but first and foremost, Miss Glenwilliam, for yourself." "And why?" Laying down the fan upon her knee, the young lady now applied her nimble fingers to smoothing the white and curling tips of the feathers. The color rushed into Lady Coryston's lightly wrinkled cheeks.
"Everybody seems extremely pleased," he said, walking at her side, and not indeed knowing what to say. "Except Coryston," replied Marcia, calmly. "I shall have a bad time with him." "Stand up to him!" he laughed. "His bark is worse than his bite Ah! A sudden sound of vehement voices overhead Lady Coryston's voice and Arthur's clashing startled them both.
Edward is away till to-morrow. This sudden appeal to her had produced in Marcia a profound intensity of feeling. She thought of Coryston's "Take care!" and trembled. Edward would not be home till the following day. She must act alone help alone. The thought braced her will. Her mother would be no use but she wished she had thought of asking Sir Wilfrid to come with her....
Marcia came, but was not admitted. Sir Wilfrid Bury asked if he might see her, just for a few minutes. A message referred him to the next morning. Dinner came and went down untouched. Whenever she was ill, Lady Coryston's ways were solitary and ungracious. She hated being "fussed over." So that no one dared force themselves upon her.
Coryston had squared her, and in a few months the Baptist Chapel his mother had staved off till now, would be flaunting it in the village. And this was Coryston's doing. What taste what feeling! A mother! to be so treated! By the time she reached her own sitting-room, Lady Coryston was very near a womanish weeping.
The likeness was carried further by Lady Coryston's tall and gaunt frame; by her formidable carriage and step; and by the energy of the long-fingered hands. In dress also there was some parallel between her and the Queen of many gowns.
Up to the moment when the news of the farm tragedy had reached him that morning, Coryston's mind had been very full of what seemed to him the impending storm between his mother and Arthur.
Her pathetic look conveyed the instinctive appeal of the young girl turning in the crisis of her life to her natural friend, her natural comforter. And it remained unanswered. She turned and beckoned to Coryston. "Come with me a moment." They went noiselessly down the staircase leading from Lady Coryston's wing, into a room which had been their schoolroom as children, on the ground floor.
Marcia knew very well that the family circumstances were abnormal. Mothers in Lady Coryston's position, when their husbands expire, generally retire to a dower-house, on a jointure; leaving their former splendors the family mansion and the family income behind them.
Give my love to Miss Wagstaffe." "Waggin" was waiting in the hall for Marcia. She had been Miss Coryston's governess for five years, and was now in retirement on a small income, partly supplied by a pension from Lady Coryston. It was understood that when she was wanted to act duenna, she came at a moment's notice. And she was very willing to come.
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