CHAPTER XVI. "We spoke of other things, we coursed about TENNYSON. My only recollection of the four following days is, that during them our party resembled a set of children playing a game of cross purposes. No two of us ever seemed to be on a right understanding with each other. We made various efforts to arrange pleasant excursions for seeing the country and spending our days out of doors, but when the time for carrying them out arrived, it always transpired that some one of the proposed party, generally either Nesta or Mr. Carr, had been misinformed about the hour, and we were compelled to set out on our walk or drive with diminished numbers and with at least one clouded face. Even when we were sauntering in the garden, or idling in twos and threes in the deep windows of the sitting-rooms, we never seemed to have the power of assorting ourselves into well-arranged groups. The people who were walking or talking with each other always seemed to be watching some one who was talking to some one else. There certainly was a spell upon us: I will not undertake to say what witch's hand laid it. For my own part, I was always vainly endeavouring to relieve Nesta from the tête-à-tête with Mr. Moorsom to which she seemed perpetually condemned. 66 Why do you let Mr. Moorsom monopolize you so completely?" I asked, one day when we were alone together, and I ventured to remark on her want of spirit. "You do not seem to enjoy his society much when you are in it." To my surprise Nesta's eyes filled with tears. "Why should I not let him talk to me if he likes it?" she asked. "No one else does now. How foolish it would be in me to expect the cleverest people to care to talk to me; it might happen for a little time, but that could only be by chance, you know." "At all events, it cannot be by chance that the stupidest person in the company is able to bore you exclusively," I said, indignantly. by Lady Helen's contrivance." "It must be "Why should you think so, Janet? Lady Helen does not leave me to him more than other people do ; so please don't say any more about it." I could have said much more if Nesta's "please' had not kept me silent; I could have said we had a host as well as a hostess, and that I thought Mr. Carr discharged his duties very ill. It was not for want of observation either. Whatever he might be doing whether he were seated at the readingtable turning over the leaves of a book, or standing in the window, as he sometimes did by the hour, lazily tossing the tassel of the blind backwards and forwards he always, I was convinced, knew the precise moment when either Nesta or Mr. Moorsom entered the room. His eye always followed them about till Nesta, like a frightened bird, was caught in the snare ; he saw her feeble little efforts to escape, and noted with a kind of satisfaction, I thought, the disappointed look that came over her face when she resigned herself to her lot. Yet he rarely, very rarely, interfered to help her. On the last day of this tedious week, Charlie and I laid a plot to free Nesta for a few hours from her inevitable companion. It was a lovely morning, and we agreed privately, before breakfast, that we three would escape from the house early and enjoy a long ramble over the marsh and on the beach. We carefully avoided giving a hint of our intention during breakfast, and succeeded in meeting at the front door without provoking any questions; over-caution against one peril, however, brought another upon us. While we were waiting on the door-step for what Charlie considered a safe opportunity for stealing across the garden to the shade of the wood, without being spied by either Mr. or Miss Moorsom, Mr. Carr put his head out of his study window, and called Charlie to come to him— "Were we going down to the shore, the three of us?-what a fine day for a walk!-would a fourth spoil our party?" and Mr. Carr was half out of the window, while Charlie's eager assurance that we should be delighted to have his company, brought a vivid colour into Nesta's cheek. Then came a demur, and Mr. Carr retreated into his study again. After all he could not get his hat without being seen by the whole party in the breakfast-room, and bringing them upon us; it was perhaps wiser to let us go alone. But, no; Charlie felt his honour concerned in baffling Miss Moorsom's sharp eyes. He undertook to bring the hat by the back way, and to cover the retreat of the whole party to the wood if we would leave it all to him, He slipped away on his errand, and Nesta looked distressfully at me. "Had we not better go back, and leave Charlie and Mr. Carr to take their walk alone?" Now I had set my heart on a walk that morning, and I would not understand Nesta's scruples. "It was ridiculous," I said, "to be turned from our plan so easily. Why should not Mr. Carr walk in his own wood if he liked?" Before we had finished whispering, Charlie appeared, creeping cautiously round the house with Mr. Carr's white straw hat stuck on the top of his own brown one. His affectation of extreme caution was so ridiculous, that we could not help laughinglaughing, but not winning-we had lingered ten minutes too long. Lady Helen heard our laughter as she was crossing the hall from the breakfastroom, and came forward, smiling, to learn its cause. 66 'Laughter sounded so pleasant in that dull old house," she said. |