CHAPTER VIII.

The soote season that bud and bloom forth brings With greene hath cladde the hyll, and eke the dale; The nightingall with feathers new she sings, The turtle to her mate hath told the tale.

Lord Surrey.

The "soote season" had arrived, and the Falkingham family were in London. Lady Blanche's heart sank within her at the prospect of the wearisome pleasures in which she would be forced to join. She shrank also from the idea of being looked upon in the light of a jilt.

Though Lady Falkingham, by her system of education, had not been able to subdue the natural warmth of Lady Blanche's feelings, or her somewhat head-long indulgence of them, she had succeeded in inspiring her with her own horror of being subject to the animadversions or the ridicule of the world, and Lady Blanche felt, more keenly than most girls, what is considered as a disgrace by all who have been well brought up.

She thought that the only mode of redeeming herself in the estimation of others was to adopt manners the most reserved; and to justify, by her scrupulous fidelity to the object for whom it was now pretty generally understood she had rejected Lord Glenrith, the inconsistency from which she could not clear herself.

Lady Falkingham, whose most ardent wish was to see her daughter settled, was in a continual state of vexation at the distant and chilling manner with which Blanche received the most common attentions. There was truth in the charge her mother brought against her, of being on the defensive, even before she was attacked: and though there is nothing more attractive than the reserve which springs from innate modesty, Lady Falkingham knew full well, that few things more offend the self-love of men, and render them proof against the charms a woman may really possess, than the reserve which seems to proceed from contempt, or from a pre-determination to check their advances.

Blanche would gladly have passed her days in retirement, but her parents believed that the only mode of effacing the impression made by Captain De Molton was to place her in the society of others. Moreover, to seclude herself entirely from the world, would be a tacit acknowledgment of deserving blame. At all the usual places of amusement they were consequently seen. But the calm brow of Lady Falkingham had acquired a careful and discontented expression; and the bright glances and glowing smile of Lady Blanche had given place to a cold and stately pensiveness. She danced occasionally, but partners no longer disputed the honour of her hand. She sometimes received compliments; nor did she dislike them, for as she felt an internal dissatisfaction, she would have enjoyed anything which tended to reconcile her to herself; but she was so afraid of appearing to enjoy them, that she assumed a disdainful manner which effectually prevented any recurrence of what appeared to give offence.

With Lady Westhope alone did she find any comfort. To her she opened her whole heart--with her she talked over each trifling incident which had occurred during their visit to Paris--to her she repeated every word De Molton had said--to her she dwelt on his looks, his manner, his expression, in their last interview at Cransley. Lady Falkingham little guessed that the cold, the discreet, the immaculate Lady Westhope, could be a companion so little calculated to lead her daughter to a reasonable and worldly view of her own prospects;--Lady Westhope, who, unknown to herself, was every day acquiring a more thorough conviction, that in mutual affection alone can a married woman expect to find happiness. Blanche's conversations with Lady Westhope tended not only to keep alive the impression produced at Paris; they also made her feel still more pledged to adhere to the attachment which she professed.

It was about the middle of the season when Lord Glenrith arrived in London. He and Lady Blanche occasionally met at public places, in large and mixed society. Their first meeting was inexpressibly awkward. By some untoward accident, they found themselves _vis-à-vis_ of each other in a quadrille. Although good breeding might prompt the fourteen or eighteen other people in the quadrille to withdraw their eyes from the pair who had once been lovers, their attention could not fail to be riveted upon them. They were to meet as friends; consequently, they bowed when first they caught each other's eye; and both blushed equally crimson. The rest of the time, they advanced and retreated, performed their _queues de chat_ and their _dos-à-dos_, without raising their eyes from the floor; but when poor Lord Glenrith was obliged in the _pastorelle_ to figure before Lady Blanche as _cavalier seul_, she felt ready to sink into the earth with distress on his account as well as on her own. The effect which this position had upon Lord Glenrith, and the degree to which his pride and his self-love suffered under the gaze of others, may be deduced from the circumstance of his having that night resolved he would not long be seen in the light of a discarded lover, and of his having the very next day begun a series of devoted attentions to the lovely daughter of the Duke of L----. Before the London season drew to a close, the magnificent _trousseau_ of the future Lady Glenrith was the general subject of conversation among young ladies; and the beautiful horses and equipages of Lord Glenrith that among young gentlemen.

Then came the morning when the narrow entrance to St. George's Church was crammed with lovely bride's-maids, and weeping, smiling relations; and the afternoon, when half the coachmen and footmen in the Park appeared with gorgeous favours in their hats; and the evening, when little morsels of tinsel ensconced in white satin ribbon were seen pinned to the side, or stuck in the button-hole, of all the most distinguished personages of both sexes.

Blanche and her affairs were utterly forgotten, and she heard on all sides descriptions of the loveliness of the bride and the happiness of the bridegroom.

In sober earnest, Blanche rejoiced that her anticipations with regard to Lord Glenrith had been so soon realised; and if she could have seen De Molton--if she could have heard him speak,--if she could have received any communication from him,--if she could have indulged any hope of ever herself knowing the happiness of reciprocal affection, she would have utterly despised the frivolous grandeurs which excited such a sensation in the London world.

But with her all seemed a blank. She had wished her story should be forgotten,--and it was forgotten. No one seemed to remember that she might have been in Lady Mary L.'s situation. She wished people to be aware that, though she had jilted Lord Glenrith, she was no flirt;--and she had succeeded! No one attempted to make love to her.

She was sitting with Lady Westhope, when Mr. Wroxholme, who had also been paying a morning visit, took his leave. "I have just heard what is to me a very melancholy piece of intelligence," said Lady Blanche. "Mr. Wroxholme tells me Parliament will sit three weeks longer. I feel so weary and so jaded with the joyless entertainments to which mamma thinks it her duty to take me! She fancies I may thus forget; but she is mistaken. My thoughts only recur the oftener to him from whom she hopes to wean them. I think, when among a number of indifferent people, one feels the want of the person with whom one would fain interchange thoughts and feelings, even more acutely than in the retirement of one's own home."

"That is only too true," answered Lady Westhope, with a sigh.

"This is to be alone--this, this is solitude."

"I like Mr. Wroxholme," rejoined Lady Blanche. "He looks as if he could understand one. I always feel at my ease with him."

"I told you you would like him! For my part I think he is quite an acquisition. I know no one who is _d'un plus doux commerce_. He has so much tact, and he is particularly obliging! One has but to express before him a wish for anything, and one is sure to find one's wish gratified."

"And then he has another great merit in my eyes: he cannot endure Mr. Stapleford."

"And I know of one more merit still," added Lady Westhope with a smile--"he likes Captain De Molton. They were school-fellows, you know."

Mr. Wroxholme had been always interested for Lady Blanche and her lover, and, with the tact for which he was supposed to be remarkable, had from the first read her feelings. When her marriage had been broken off, Lady Westhope had not scrupled to speak confidentially to a person who had shown so much sympathy and kindness concerning her friend. Mr. Wroxholme had warmly approved of Lady Blanche's disinterestedness, and, naturally enough, had spoken his sentiments on the subject of worldly marriages.

He seemed to consider congeniality of tempers, tastes, and opinions, as the only objects to be sought in such a connexion; and there was something to Lady Westhope's feelings singularly soothing and agreeable in hearing such sentiments so warmly expressed, especially as her strict notions of propriety could not take the alarm at a disprejudiced observer merely giving an opinion upon the affairs of a third person.

All he said breathed a tone of high respect for the sex in general--a generous horror of seeing a woman thrown away upon a man who was not worthy of her, or who did not sufficiently value her, which could not fail to be gratifying to a person who felt such to be her own case.

The indignation he felt at Lord Westhope's neglect of his wife, and the pleasure she took in finding herself appreciated, might gradually and unconsciously have led them both to entertain sentiments for which both would have reproached themselves, had nothing occurred to arouse them to a sense of their danger. An incident did however occur, which, though trifling in itself, served to open the eyes of one who had no wish to keep them wilfully closed.