It will be perceived, from all that has been said, that Nelly Rich used more freedom in the expression of her sentiments than is generally expected from girls of her age. A well brought-up young woman is not supposed to go off affronted when her admirer, real or supposed, shows a sudden interest in music, or anything else, independent of herself. The modern code of manners exacts that she should, if not grin, at least smile and bear it, with as much courage and as little of the air either of offence or resignation, as possible. Nelly betrayed her less exalted origin in this, that she allowed her real sentiments to escape her. There can be no doubt that she had given Frank intimations of her readiness to look favourably upon him which a more reticent girl would have blushed to give, and on which was built much that would else have seemed coxcombical in his behaviour. When a young woman asks if there is no possible chance that would induce a young man to change his mind about going to India or elsewhere, she is either beguiling{v.2-235} and deluding that young man, or she is exhibiting, as far as she can, ‘intentions’ which are generally supposed to originate on the other side. And then her abrupt exit was a startling thing. When he was left alone in the music-room with the open piano, and Nelly’s book lying on the table, Frank did not feel comfortable. He was left, as it were, master of the field. But it cannot be said that it is a pleasant thing to rout your friends so completely in their own house, and find yourself in solitary possession of their usual haunts. The evening passed, however, less unpleasantly than this scene would have led a looker-on to suppose. Alice, learning wisdom from experience, excused herself on the plea of being tired from playing; and Frank made his peace with Nelly, saying no more about his brother, and talking of the Beauchamps, and Mary Westbury, and his own home. The Renton woods were an unfailing subject,—as were also his own boyish adventures, into the history of which he was drawn by Mrs. Rich, whose inquiries were manifold. A man, especially if he is still a boy, has always a certain pleasure in uttering such reminiscences to sympathetic ears. The ladies laughed at his Eton scrapes, and were edified by his adventures on the river, and listened with ready interest, and smiles, and wanderings, to all his schoolboy tales. He felt himself of importance as he turned from one to another, and it pleased him to see Nelly seriously inclined to listen. She was interested,{v.2-236}—it was no make-believe,—interested in Frank in the first place, and after that, like a true woman, interested in every detail about him. She liked to know how he had distinguished, and how he had committed, himself. It seemed to give her something to do with him; and Frank, too, felt the charm of confidence. She had put aside her waywardness, and listened with bright eyes of interest, with an eager ear, with smiles and exclamations. She made him describe Renton to her over and over again, and those points of view which people went to see.

‘I could row you over,’ he said, ‘any day. From Cookesley to Renton is an easy pull. Let us make up a party and do it. The river is lovely, and if you have not seen it before——’

‘I have never been higher up than Cookesley,’ said Nelly; and thus it was arranged, though Mrs. Rich shook her head.

‘We shall see when the time comes,’ that wise mother said; and Frank perceived that it was only in case his mother should make up her mind to be civil that this little expedition would be permitted.

He made himself very agreeable to Nelly that evening, undismayed by the events of the afternoon. Alice was out of the way. She was at the other end of the room, looking over engravings, and resisting Alf’s entreaties that she should play something. ‘Nelly would not like it,’ she said to herself; ‘she is talking, and she likes that better.’ And Alice felt{v.2-237} herself somewhat silent and wistful, and wished herself back in Fitzroy Square. That evening it appeared to her that she was not enjoying her visit as she had expected to do. She missed her mother, and she missed the children, and Miss Hadley, and her usual duties, and perhaps something else too, though she did not know what was in her own thoughts. Sometimes she cast a wistful glance across the room at Nelly smiling and softened, with that look of absorbed attention in her brilliant eyes. Alice had been shocked by her friend’s freedom of speech, but, as was so natural, impressed by it also. Unconsciously she herself began to speculate about Nelly. Could there be—as girls say—anything between her and Frank Renton? Was that why she was cross, and was it not the music? Alice felt herself to be pushed aside, and it was not a cheerful feeling; but fortunately the only form it took was a longing for home. She had home to fall back upon whatever might befall her here. If any vague discontent came down upon her heart, happiness and peace, as of old, dwelt and waited for her in the Square. This was her feeling, as she sat in the distant corner looking over the photographs. Alf had settled down sulkily when she refused to play to him, on a sofa near, and Mr. Rich slept the sleep of the just, the Sunday evening crown of the week’s exertion, in an easy chair midway between her and the table, with a lamp burning brilliantly upon it, round which were{v.2-238} grouped Mrs. Rich and Nelly and the young visitor. When Alice saw them laughing and talking, she felt that she would have liked to be there too, and have a part in the fun. But they did not call her, and she was too shy to go unasked, and she found the evening a little long.

When Frank Renton left Richmont the next morning it was with a mind by no means settled or at rest. He had received the warmest invitations to return from the parent pair, and Nelly was not slow to intimate that she looked for him soon. ‘Come over here when Lord Edgbaston’s refined society palls upon you,’ Nelly said. ‘Indeed, Edgbaston is a very good fellow,’ Frank answered, apologetically. ‘I know he is a lord,’ was Nelly’s reply. She did not care for a lord, nor had she given so much of her society or conversation to any one of her followers, though many of them were much more eligible in every way than Frank. This compliment went to the bottom of his heart. No doubt she was full of intelligence and discrimination, and could see the difference between one man and another; and she was, when she liked, the brightest little sympathetic creature, and awfully clever,—clever enough to make up a man’s deficiencies in that way; but yet——! These were the young man’s thoughts as he walked down to Cookesley to get his boat. He was going to the Manor, after all, to see his mother; and on the way he turned everything over{v.2-239} again in his mind. Nelly was very nice, when she pleased; and though her connexions were nothing to brag of, still that was not a thing which people took into severe consideration when a man married money, especially when the money was young and pretty. And yet——! Frank could not but ask himself how it was that the girl who took a fellow’s fancy—the one he would really have gone after had he been able to choose for himself—should never be the one who had the fifty thousand pounds. It was a curious spite of fortune. When he directed his mind to the serious consideration of this grand question—the first great social problem he had ever tackled on his own account—a singular dissipating influence always arrested him. Stray notes of music would float across his mind,—a bit of a melody which compelled him to hum it,—a perplexing bar which would separate from everything else, and echo in his ear. And when he returned to the consideration of Nelly Rich, another little agile figure stepped in before her, the one shadow jostling the other out of the way with a curious reality. It was not he who did it, nor had his will any share in the matter. They did it themselves, independent of any influence of his. So that the more he thought it over the more perplexed he became; and yet it was not a matter which could be suffered to run on and be decided any time. It must be settled, and that at once.

With his head full of these thoughts, he walked{v.2-240} down across the cheerful, blooming country to Cookesley. The day was quite bright enough for the expedition he had proposed to Nelly; and when the recollection of this proposed expedition came back to his mind, Frank fell into pondering whether his mother would call. Why should she not call? It was quite true that she was an invalid; and also true that she was in the deepest of mourning; but still, the carriage, with Mary in it, and a card, would do. Mere civility! he said to himself. And if it should be for Laurie’s interest,—or even for his own! Instead of going to India. Frank knew that his mother would have visited anybody in the country on that inducement. And it might come to that. He stepped into his boat with so serious a countenance that the men at the wharf took note of it. ‘Them Rentons, they ain’t up to no good,’ one said to another. ‘The eldest gentleman, as was here the other day, was awful changed, and this one, as is the swellest of all, looks as black as if he was a-carrying of the world on his shoulders.’ This chance observation Frank overheard as he glided his boat through the maze of skiffs into clear water. It made him smile when he was fairly afloat and out of reach of observation. He had more than the world on his shoulders. What would the mere world have been, or any superficial weight, compared to the task of deciding what his whole life was to be? According as he made up his mind now would be{v.2-241} the direction and colour of his existence. No wonder he looked black. But how was it that the eldest gentleman had so changed? And Laurie was gone without giving any reason. It was hard to think that it was their father’s fault,—the father who had been so good to them. Seven months before they had all looked up to him with the undoubting, affectionate confidence of sons who had never known anything but kindness; and now they were all scattered to the different corners of the world, separated from each other, broken up, and set adrift. Frank was more a man of the world than either of his brothers, though he was so young. He could not but ask himself,—Was not old Rich right? Mr. Renton’s mind must have been touched. He could not have been guilty of such an injury to them all had he been in full possession of his reason. Thus, if he did not look black, he looked at least very grave, as he pulled up the river, unlike the light-hearted young Guardsman who had so often made the banks ring with his laughter and boyish nonsense. He was approaching his twenty-first birthday, and he was having the grand problem submitted to his decision. It was not pleasure and virtue, certainly, which stood before him offering; him the irrevocable choice. There was no particular sin in adopting either course, and no unspeakable delight; nothing infinitely seductive to move his senses, or loftily excellent to restrain them. If he were to marry Nelly and stay at home, he{v.2-242} would be to all intents and purposes as good and as honest as if he went to India. And if he went to India he would be sufficiently well off, and quite as happy,—perhaps happier than if he stayed at home. The question was a fine modern one between two neutral shades of well-doing, and not a primitive alternative between black and white, salvation and ruin. You will say that to marry a girl he did not love would have been a sin; but Frank did not see it in that light. If he did marry her, no doubt they would get on very well together. Nelly was not, as we have already said, a temptation to be resisted, but, most probably, a sober duty which he ought not to neglect. He was not passionate, like Ben, nor was he meditative, like his brother Laurie. He was the practical man of the family. If it had been decided to be right, no doubt he would have done it like a man, and been quite comfortable ever after. The difficulty was that there was too much neutral tint about the whole question. It was possible that he might do quite as well for himself in India as by marrying money. The chances were too equal, the gain too uncertain, to make the decision easy.

Mrs. Renton received him as usual in her dim room with the blinds down, a bottle of medicine on the table, and her arrowroot in the background. It was a different atmosphere, certainly, from that of Richmont. His mother wept a few tears as Frank kissed her. She was apt to do so now-a-days when one{v.2-243} of her sons appeared. And Ben’s farewell visit had been but a few days before, and had shaken her more than anything that had happened since her husband’s death. She could do nothing but talk of him. ‘He was looking quite well, Frank, quite well,’ she said, over and over again, ‘though I am sure living shut up in London all winter would have killed any one else. And he is to sail on Friday,’ Mrs. Renton added with a sigh. As for Mary Westbury, she, too, bore traces of having been moved by Ben’s visit. ‘Oh, he is quite in good spirits about going,’ she interposed. ‘I think he likes the idea.’ Frank, with his new-born experience, felt at once that something must have happened, and that all was not merely simple, straightforward, cousinly friendship between Mary and Ben.

‘I suppose that was why you did not send for me,’ he said; ‘but, mamma, you must take the consequences. Instead of only dining at Richmont, I have passed the Sunday there, and I hope you will be so polite as to call. They are very good sort of people, and they have been very kind to me.’

‘Those new people!’ said Mrs. Renton. ‘What a house for you to spend Sunday in! Your note never came till yesterday, when the servants came back from church; and I thought of course you must have gone back to Royalborough. Mary will tell you all about it, and how we consulted what to do.{v.2-244}’

‘But, mother, I want you to call on Mrs. Rich,’ repeated Frank.

‘My dear!’ said Mrs. Renton, sitting up on her sofa.

But Frank was aware that she must not be allowed to stand up for herself, and confirm her own resolution by talk. ‘They are friends of Laurie’s,’ he said, making a little gulp at the fib; ‘they are fond of him, and they may have it in their power to be kind to him, too. They are going to Italy next year.’

‘My poor Laurie!’ cried Mrs. Renton. ‘He has written me such a nice letter. He says he could not come to say good-bye; that it would have been too much for him. So he says; but I am sure he was afraid to come to let me see how pale he was looking. You don’t think it is anything about his lungs which has taken him to Italy? He might confide in you.’

‘Why it is for his pictures, not his lungs,’ said Frank, with the cheerful confidence of ignorance. ‘Those Riches are friends of his. I am sure it would be good for him if you could make up your mind to call. Don’t you think he is the sort of man who ought to marry money?’ Frank added............