The storm subsided which had raged around Joyce for that long and miserable day. When a few others had passed in their usual calm, the Colonel, who had elaborately refrained from all allusion to what had occurred, saying even from time to time, ‘We must not speak of that,’ made up his mind with great satisfaction that Joyce had dismissed it from her mind. ‘She is so full of sense,’ he said to his wife; ‘she doesn’t go fretting and worrying about a thing as I do. When she knows that there is nothing to be done, she just puts it aside. I wish we were all as sensible as Joyce.’
‘Then take care you don’t remind her of it,’ said Mrs. Hayward.
‘I—remind her! Why, I have said from the first—We’ll say nothing of that. Time will settle it. I have said it every day. And you think I would remind her!’
‘Well, Henry, I would not say even that if I were you. I have given Baker his orders never to let that man in again. I hate to take servants into my confidence, but still—— Fortunately nobody has seen him or knows anything about him,’ said the deceived woman, with mistaken calm. She was not so sure about Joyce’s good sense as her husband was; but even in the midst of her annoyance a certain compassion for Joyce had awakened in her mind. Poor thing! to feel herself bound to such a man. ‘And we are not done with him,’ Mrs. Hayward said to herself. She sighed for the calm of those days when there were no complications—when it was quite unnecessary to give Baker any instructions as to who should be admitted—when a disturbance and angry controversy in her pretty drawing-room would have been a thing inconceivable. She thought she could decipher a trace of Andrew’s country boots on the Persian rug, a delightful specimen upon which (she had remarked at the time) he had placed his chair. The Colonel in his anger had crushed up between his hands a piece of fine embroidery, and ravelled out some of the gold thread which
{316}
 formed the exquisite pattern. In spite of these things Mrs. Hayward, for the first time, was sorry for Joyce. She felt with an impatient vexation that if Captain Bellendean had but ‘spoken’ when she thought he did, all this might have been avoided. There would no doubt still have been a struggle. The schoolmaster would not have given in without a fight; but Mrs. Hayward knew human nature well enough to be sure that with a man behind her whom she loved, Joyce would have felt her bond to the man whom she did not love to be still more impossible. In such a case fidelity was no longer a virtue but a crime.
But Bellendean had gone, and had not spoken. Mrs. Hayward had been both angry and disappointed by this failure. She had blamed Joyce for it, and she had blamed the Colonel for it. That a man should afficher himself and then go away was a thing not to be endured, according to her ideas. And now she was really sorry for Joyce, in both these aspects of her case. If Joyce had but known how much her stepmother divined, all her troubles would have been increased tenfold. But fortunately she did not know, although the additional kindness of Mrs. Hayward’s manner gave her now and then a thrill of fear.
She was walking with her father in the park one morning, not long after these events. Winter was coming on with great strides, and the leaves fell in showers before every breath of wind. Some of the trees were already bare. Some stood up all golden yellow against the background of bare boughs, lighting up the landscape. The grass was all particoloured with the sprinklings of the fallen leaves. Under the hill the river flowed down the valley, coming out of distances unseen. The Colonel and his daughter paused at a favourite point of theirs to look at the prospect. The wide vault of firmament above and the great breadth of air and space beyond were always a refreshment and consolation. ‘O Thames! flow softly while I sing my song,’ Joyce said, under her breath.
‘Eh?—what were you saying, Joyce?’
‘Nothing,’ she said, with a smile; ‘only a line out of a poem.’
‘Ah! you know so much more about books, my dear, than I have ever done. You must get that turn in your education early, or you never take it of yourself. I have never asked you, Joyce, though it has often been on the tip of my tongue. How do you like the place, now you know it? I hope you like your home.’
‘It is very—bonnie. I use that word,’ said Joyce, ‘because it means the most. Pretty would be impertinent to the Thames—and beautiful——’
‘Do you think beautiful’s too much? Well, my dear, tastes
{317}
 differ; but I never saw anything that pleased me like the course of the river and the splendid trees. You should have lived in a hot climate to appreciate fully English trees.’
‘Oh, but I do,’ cried Joyce. ‘They are finer than we have—in Scotland,’ she said, after a pause. It had been on her lips to say ‘at home.’
‘Much finer,’ said the Colonel, with conviction; ‘but that is not exactly an answer to my question. I asked if you liked it—as your home.’
Joyce raised her eyes to him, moist and shining. ‘Father,’ she said, ‘it is you who are my home.’
‘My love!’ the Colonel stammered and faltered, in unexpected emotion. The water came to his eyes and blotted out the landscape. ‘You make me very happy and very proud, Joyce. This is more, much more than I had any right to.’ He took her hand in his and drew it within his arm. ‘I have wanted,’ he said, ‘to surround you with everything that your poor mother did not have—to make you happy if I could, my dear: but I scarcely expected such a return as this. God bless you, Joyce! Still,’ said the pertinacious inquirer, caressing the hand upon his arm, ‘that’s not quite what I asked, my dear.’
Joyce had twice avoided the direct response he demanded. She paused before she replied. ‘Some,’ she said, ‘father, are happy enough never to need to think, or ask such a question. I wish I had been always where you were, and never to have had any life but yours; or else——’ Colonel Hayward fortunately did not remark these two syllables, which were softly said, and breathed off into a sigh.
‘My dear,’ he said, ‘under the best of circumstances that could never have been, for you know the most of my life has been spent in India. The worst of India is, that parents must part with their children. We should not really have known very much more of each other if—if you had been born, as you should have been, in your father’s house.’
‘Then there is little harm done,’ said Joyce, this time with a smile.
‘Not if you trust us fully, my dear, and love your home.’ He patted her hand again, then moved on unsatisfied. ‘I think, however, you are beginning to like the people, and feel at home among them. And they like you. I am sure they like you—and admire you, Joyce, and feel that you are—— There is Lady St. Clair, my dear, with all her bevy of girls. You will want to stop and speak to them. My wife says they’re the best
{318}
people, but I’m not myself very fond—— How do you do?’ cried the Colonel cheerily, taking off his hat with a flourish. ‘Lovely morning! How do you do?’
The old soldier stood the image of good-humour and cheerful courtesy, holding his hat in his hand. There were so many ladies to share his bow that it was longer than usual, and gave the wind time to blow about a little the close curly locks, touched with gray, which covered the Colonel’s head with all the vigour of youth. His countenance beamed with kindness and that civility of the heart which made the fact that he was not himself very fond of this group inoperative. But when Lady St. Clair, picking her steps to the other side of the road, delivered in return the most chilling of faint bows, while her daughters hurried like a flock of birds across the park to avoid the encounter, Colonel Hayward stood dumb with consternation in the middle of the path. His under lip dropped in his astonishment, he forgot to put on his hat. He turned to Joyce, holding it in his hand, with dismay in his face. ‘What—what,’ he cried, ‘is the meaning of that?’
‘Indeed I don’t know,’ said Joyce. She was not aroused to the importance of the action. Unfortunately she did not care, nor did it seem to her that so slight a matter was worth noticing. ‘They were perhaps in a hurry,’ she said.
‘In a hurry! They meant to avoid us. They would rather not have seen us. What does it mean, Joyce? They consulted together, and the girls rushed off, and their mother—I am utterly astounded, Joyce.’
‘But,’ said Joyce, very calmly, ‘if they did not wish to speak to us, why should they? I do not think I care.’
The Colonel put on his hat. He had grown a little pale. ‘Elizabeth will not like it,’ he said. ‘She will not like it at all. For a long time she would not go into society, because of—— But now that she does she likes to know all the best people. I am not myself fond of those St. Clairs. But any unpleasantness, I am sure, would make her unhappy. Can I have done anything, I wonder? I am a blundering old fellow,—I may have neglected some etiquette——’
‘Perhaps it would be bett............