The Clever Woman of the Family [108]
by her aunt for the few last touches to the throat of her jacket, he leant down and murmured, "I thought he was safe out riding." "Oh no, no, it is not that," hastily answered Lady Temple, a fresh suffusion of crimson colour rustling over her face, and inspiring an amount of curiosity that rendered a considerable effort of attention necessary to be as supremely charming a companion as Rose generally found him in the walks that he made it his business to take with her. He turned about long before Rose thought they had gone far enough, and when he re-entered the parlour there was such an expectant look on his face that Ermine's bright eyes glittered with merry mischief, when she sent Rose to take off her walking dress. "Well!" he said. "Well? Colin, have you so low an opinion of the dignity of your charge as to expect her to pour out her secrets to the first ear in her way?" "Oh, if she has told you in confidence." "No, she has not told me in confidence; she knew better." "She has told you nothing?" "Nothing!" and Ermine indulged in a fit of laughter at his discomfiture, so comical that he could not but laugh himself, as he said, "Ah! the pleasure of disappointing me quite consoles you." "No; the proof of the discretion of womanhood does that! You thought, because she tells all her troubles to you, that she must needs do so to the rest of the world." "There is little difference between telling you and me." "That's the fault of your discretion, not of hers." "I should like to know who has been annoying her. I suspect--" "So do I. And when you get the confidence at first hand, you will receive it with a better grace than if you had had a contraband foretaste." He smiled. "I thought yours a more confidence-winning face, Ermine." "That depends on my respect for the individual. Now I thought Lady Temple would much prefer my looking another way, and talking about Conrade's Latin grammar, to my holding out my arms and inviting her to pour into my tender breast what another time she had rather not know that I knew." "That is being an honourable woman," he said, and Rose's return ended the exchange of speculations; but it must be confessed that at their next meeting Ermine's look of suppressed inquiry quite compensated for her previous banter, more especially as neither had he any confidence to reveal or conceal, only the tidings that the riders, whose coalition had justified Lady Temple's prudence, had met Mr. Touchett wandering in the lanes in the twilight, apparently without a clear idea of what he was doing there. And on the next evening there was quite an excitement, the curate looked so ill, and had broken quite down when he was practising with the choir boys before church; he had, indeed, gone safely through the services, but at school he had been entirely at a loss as to what Sunday it was, and had still more unfortunately forgotten that to be extra civil to Miss Villars was the only hope of retaining her services, for he had walked by her with less attention than if she had been the meanest scholar. Nay, when his most faithful curatolatress had offered to submit to him a design for an illumination for Christmas, he had escaped from her with a desperate and mysterious answer that he had nothing to do with illumination, he hoped it would be as sombre as possible. No wonder Avonmouth was astonished, and that guesses were not confined to Mackarel Lane. "Well, Colin," said Ermine, on the Tuesday, "I have had a first-hand confidence, though from a different quarter. Poor Mr. Touchett came to announce his going away." "Going!" "Yes. In the very nick of time, it seems, Alick Keith has had a letter from his uncle's curate, asking him to see if he could meet with a southern clergyman to exchange duties for the winter with a London incumbent who has a delicate wife, and of course. Mr. Touchett jumped at it." "A very good thing--a great relief." "Yes. He said he was very anxious for work, but he had lost ground in this place within the last few months, and he thought that