CHAPTER 7.

            MEANWHILE Sophia Bevan had no notion of allowing her old friend to slip out of her life in this manner. Her friendship lasted as long as her regard. She knew and loved Edmund Noel well enough to take the liberty of interfering for his good.

            As soon as she could get free from her guests, she set off for London, accompanied only by her maid, and telling Lady Bevan that she feared there was something wrong with Edmund, and that she could not rest until she had at least tried to set it “right.

            She found him looking haggard in face and shabby in mien, devoid of the careful elegance with which she knew he had been accustomed always to surround himself, and altogether unlike his former self. There was a hard glitter in his eyes, and a mixture of sarcasm and cynicism in his speech, which alarmed her. She had intended at first to tell him that she had come expressly to see what he was doing with himself, and to take him to task for his neglect of his friends. But on seeing him she changed her plan, and said that she had run up to town on business, and could not leave it without haying a chat with him. Was it his uncle’s affairs that were worrying him? she asked, with affectionate concern.

            ‘I dare say they would, if I were to let them: but I have other things to think of,’ was his reply.

            ‘But I have understood that there is a large fortune awaiting you, by proper management.’

            ‘May be. I don’t trouble myself about it. I prefer literature to law, work to wealth.’

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            Unable to make anything of him, she said that really all her greatest friends seemed to be turning against her. There was Margaret choosing to live away in Italy, all alone with her children and nurse, and the old woman wrote that she never saw her mistress so happy.

            ‘Is that recent news?’ asked Edmund, with as much indifference as he could contrive.

            ‘Only last week. I want her to come home.’

            ‘Margaret is – Margaret. Better leave her where she is contented. She certainly seemed to be so last month when I saw her.’

            ‘You saw her! What, have you been to Rome this winter?’

            ‘I ran over just for a change, and had a peep at the happy family. When do you return to Devonshire? Lady Bevan is well, I trust. Mind yon give her my best love. Dear old lady, I wish there were more like her.’

            Sophia went away provoked and perplexed. Determined to save him if she could, in spite of himself, she went to his solicitor, to whom she was slightly known.

            Abruptly telling him her errand, and saying that her interference was justified by a life’s friendship and earnest concern for his client’s welfare, she gained the lawyer’s confidence sufficiently for him to admit that Noel’s neglect of business was a serious obstacle to a favourable settlement of his uncle’s affairs, and that it would be a friendly act in any one who would induce him to give his attention to them. There was prospect of a very handsome residue after all demands were settled.

            ‘He must be very well off now,’ said Sophia. ‘My cousin’s share of the sale of the Mexican property has made her a rich woman, though I do not know the amount.’

            ‘Do you happen to know whether they were owners of equal shares in the property?’ asked the lawyer.

            ‘Yes, I am sure of that. Why?’

            ‘The portion which came to Mr. Noel would scarcely justify the term rich. It made an addition to his previous income, certainly, but it was very far from what I had been led to anticipate.’

            ‘Yet I understood that the sale had been a most satisfactory one. Stay. I think I comprehend it. I will go to Edmund and ask. No. Tell me the amount he got for his share, and I will write and ask my cousin hers.’

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            ‘I am not able to give you the information at this moment,’ said the lawyer, who did not feel at liberty to disclose so much of his employer’s affairs without permission.

            ‘Well, it is no matter. I will ask Edmund himself.’ And Sophia took her leave.

            Presenting herself a second time to Noel, she said, –

            ‘Please don’t think I wish to annoy you, but I went away and forgot one of the things I most wanted to ask you. It has occurred to mamma and me that our dear Margaret has withdrawn herself from ns through a fear of being a burden to us, and that she lives in Italy for the sake of economy. We can’t bear the idea of her being pinched. You can tell me if she really has an income on which she can live comfortably.’

            ‘You don’t suppose that I should allow James Maynard’s widow to want for anything?’ said Noel.

            ‘And therefore you have given her the whole, or nearly the whole, of the Mexican purchase-money?’

            ‘Pray what put such a thing into your head?’

            ‘Things come into my head without being put there,’ she returned saucily; and then her eyes were suffused with tears, as she added, –

            ‘But, Edmund, dear, you ought to know that we women don’t learn things with our heads merely. We should be much oftener wrong than we are if we trusted to them. If I have never been mistaken in you, it is because I have always read you with my heart, until I think I know you by heart. It is my heart that tells me you have done this for Margaret. It is my heart that tens me yon have been to Rome with a special object in seeing her. It is my heart that tens me that whatever that object may have been, you have come back disappointed. And it is my heart that tells me you are indulging in a morbid misanthropy, neglecting duties, and rejecting a fortune and career that are within your reach, – for such, I understand, is your position in regard to your uncle’s property. Why, you don’t’ suppose that I can see my old friend and playmate melting away out of my sight, as you are doing, and not seek to discover the meaning of it, or try to retain him? Tell me, have I done anything to forfeit your friendship? If I have been naughty, I will repent very humbly, and she for forgiveness. But I cannot lose you without knowing why.’

            ‘My dear Sophy,’ he returned, ‘I have nothing to reproach you with. I have just as much affection and regard for you as

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ever. Pray think of any cause but that. Think it possible that I may be going through a phase of character which seems to you strange and distant: and that I may prefer going through it unobserved. But this is no dereliction of friendship.

            ‘It is a very ordinary phenomenon.’

            ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I am glad yon have nothing against me.’

            ‘Not that I thought you had. Rather is my complaint against you, for letting yourself be or moody, or whatever it is, and never letting me have a chance of helping you through it. Do you know what a woman’s diagnosis and prescription for you would be?’

            ‘I suppose that, as is usual with her sex, she would jump to a conclusion, in total ignorance or disregard of the symptoms.’

            ‘Possibly; but, thinking with her heart, and feeling with her brain, as I try to do, she would say that a man who acts, or does not act, as you are doing, is either in love, or ought to be. That is, he needs a wife, whether he wants one or not.’

            ‘The same prescription has been given me before,’ said Noel, trying to laugh.

            ‘By whom?’

            ‘By Margaret.’

            ‘May I ask, when?’

            ‘Oh yes; in Capri. After my uncle’s death.’

            ‘Did she recommend any one?’ ‘Oh, dear, yes.’

            ‘Any one I know?’

            He hesitated. She went on, –

            ‘Was it I?’

            ‘Yes.’

            ‘Dear, good Margaret. She knew I should at least take care of you, and not let you waste your life. Did she renew her recommendation when you saw her in Rome lately?’

            ‘Well, really, I don’t think the subject was mentioned. The atmosphere of Rome is not suggestive of matrimony. At any rate, her thoughts did not seem that way inclined.’

            ‘Well, I forgive her. While James was living, there was one person who was too good for you. Now there is another who might do better. Has she refused you?’

            ‘What do you mean?’

            ‘I mean what I thought years ago, when I first knew Margaret; that she and you were made for each other. That

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you controlled the feeling before is very creditable to you. But there is no necessity for doing so now.’

            Really, for the remarkably plain-spoken young lady you generally are, you are wonderfully enigmatical to-day.’

            ‘Don’t pretend. Margaret is a woman that no man can help being in love with. Least of all a man like you. I am in love with her myself. If I thought you were not in love with her, I should think the worse of you.’

            ‘Is love, in your experience, so omnipotent as to compel love?’

            ‘No, it is not, as you very well know,’ she replied, her eyes filling with tears, perhaps at some reminiscence of her own life.

            ‘My dear Sophy, I did not mean to pain yon. I only asked if it followed necessarily that because I love her, she should love me.’

            ‘You admit loving her, then?’

            ‘Denial seems to be useless with such a very positive philosopher as you are. I don’t mind your thinking what you please; but I should be very sorry for the same idea to be given to Margaret. With you, the imaginative faculty is so active that you can suppose and un-suppose, and no harm done. But she is different. It would dash the whole of our relations to each other, were she to think that my friendship had any ulterior reference. I should not like to seem selfish in her eyes.’

            ‘You don’t deny a bit of my indictment; and I am more sure than ever that I am right, because for about the first time in your life you are serious with me, and do not fly out at my interference.’

            ‘I know, my dear Sophy, that you always mean most kindly by me. If I have ever seemed to resent the activity of your interest, it is only owing to the reserve that seems natural to me, but morbid to you. But I have often been obliged to you afterwards, for dragging me out of myself, though I may not have shown it.’

            ‘I am so unaccustomed to gratitude from yon,’ she said, smiling through the tears that still glistened in her eyes, that a little of it goes a great way with me. But I must be going now. You will let me see you again before I return home, will you not? It will haunt me to think I have left you unhappy.’

            ‘I have a great mind to reward you for your devotion

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giving you some verses of mine to look over. I think they will interest you, as illustrating some of y our friend’s phases of feeling. But you must not take them as having any dose or literal application.’

            ‘Oh do; I shall be so pleased if only I can guess at any- thing of you beneath the surface.’

            And she took leave of him, carrying with her the verses which Margaret had found in the book he had left with her in the forest at Dolóres.

            She had no sooner gone than Noel regretted what he had done. ‘Her active imagination will be sure to connect Margaret with those fines,’ he thought. ‘But there is no great harm in that, if she does not suspect Margaret of being a party to them. Her true friendship deserves more acknowledgment than I can make in return.’

            The next morning’s post brought him this note, evidently hurriedly dashed off in excitement: –

            ‘I do hope you will not claim your poem back just yet. It is quite safe with me, and I do so enjoy having it. I have read it over and over. It is very fervid and felt. Indeed, it seems as if all feeling must have been exhausted in those three experiences: – in the first, passion without affection; in the second, affection without passion; in the third, both combined. What can Life offer beyond that? Do not complain. You have had your cake.’

            The evening’s post brought him a second note, saying he would not see her again for some days, as she was going into the country.

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