The company at Lyle Abbey saw very little of Maitland for some days after his arrival. He never appeared of a morning; he only once came down to dinner; his pretext was indifferent health, and Mark showed a disposition to quarrel with any one who disputed it. Not, indeed, that the squirearchy then present were at all disposed to regret Maitland's absence. They would infinitely rather have discussed his peculiarities in secret committee than meet himself in open debate. It was not very easy to say why they did not like him, but such was the fact. It was not that he overbore them by any species of assumption; he neither took on him airs of superior station nor of superior knowledge; he was neither insolent nor haughty; nor was he even, what sometimes is not less resented, careless and indifferent His manner was a sort of middle term between popularity-seeking and inattention. The most marked trait in it was one common enough in persons who have lived much on the Continent,—a great preference for the society of ladies making him almost ignore or avoid the presence of the men around him. Not that Maitland was what is called petit maÎtre; there was not any of that flippant prettiness which is supposed to have its fascination for the fair sex; he was quiet without any touch of over-seriousness, very respectful, and at the same time with an insinuated friendliness as though the person he talked to was one selected for especial cordiality; and there was a sort of tender languor too about him, that implied some secret care in his heart, of which each who listened to his conversation was sure to fancy that she was one day to become the chosen depositary.

“Do you know, Bella,” said Mrs. Trafford, as they sat together at the fire in her dressing-room, “I shall end by half liking him.”

“I have n't got that far, Alice, though I own that I am less in dread of him than I was. His superiority is not so crushing as I feared it might be; and certainly, if he be the Admirable Crichton Mark pretends he is, he takes every possible pains to avoid all display of it.”

“There may be some impertinence in that,” said the other. “Did you remark how he was a week here before he as much as owned he knew anything of music, and listened to our weary little ballads every evening without a word? and last night, out of pure caprice, as it seemed, he sits down, and sings song after song of Verdi's difficult music, with a tenor that reminds one of Mario.”

“And which has quite convinced old Mrs. Maxwell that he is a professional, or, as she called it, 'a singing man.'”

“She would call him a sketching man if she saw the caricature he made of herself in the pony carriage, which he tore up the moment he showed it to me.”

“One thing is clear, Alice,—he means that we should like him; but he is too clever to set about it in any vulgar spirit of captivation.”

“That is, he seeks regard for personal qualities rather more than admiration for his high gifts of intellect. Well, up to this, it is his cleverness that I like.”

“What puzzles me is why he ever came here. He is asked about everywhere, has all manner of great houses open to him, and stores of fine people, of whose intimacy you can see he is proud; and yet he comes down to a dull country place in a dull county; and, stranger than all, he seems to like it.”

“John Hunter says it is debt,” said Mrs. Trafford.

“Mark Fortescue hints that a rich and handsome widow has something to say to it.”

“Paul M'Clintock declares that he saw your picture by Ary Scheffer in the Exhibition, and fell madly in love with it, Bella.”

“And old Colonel Orde says that he is intriguing to get in for the borough of Coleraine; that he saw him in the garden t'other morning with a list of the electors in his hand.”

“My conjecture is, that he is intolerably bored everywhere, and came down here to try the effect of a new mode of the infliction that he had never experienced before. What else would explain a project I heard him arrange for this morning,—a walk with Beck Graham!”

“Yes, I was in the window when he asked her where she usually went in those wanderings over the fern hills, with that great umbrella; and she told him to visit an old lady—a Mrs. Butler—who had been a dear friend of her mother's; and then he said, 'I wish you 'd take me with you. I have a positive weakness for old ladies;' and so the bargain was struck, that they were to go to the cottage to-day together.”

“Beck, of course, fancying that it means a distinct avowal of attention to herself.”

“And her sister, Sally, very fully persuaded that Maitland is a suitor for her hand, and cunningly securing Beck's good offices before he risks a declaration.”

“Sally already believes that Mark is what she calls 'landed;' and she gave me some pretty broad hints about the insufferable pretensions of younger sons, to which class she consigns him.”

“And Beck told me yesterday, in confidence, that Tony had been sent away from home by his mother, as the last resource against the consequence of his fatal passion for her.”

“Poor Tony,” sighed the young widow, “he never thought of her.”

“Did he tell you as much, Alice?” said her sister, slyly.

“No, dear; it is the one subject—I mean love in any shape—that we never discussed. The poor boy confessed to me all his grief about his purposeless idle life, his mother's straitened fortune, and his uncle's heartless indifference; everything, in short, that lay heavily on his heart.”

“Everything but the heaviest, Alice,” said the other smiling.

“Well, if he had opened that sorrow, I 'd have heard him without anger; I'd have honestly told him it was a very vain and fruitless pursuit. But still my own heart would have declared to me that a young fellow is all the better for some romance of this kind,—that it elevates motives and dignifies actions, and, not least of all advantages, makes him very uncompanionable for creatures of mere dissipation and excess.”

“But that, of course, you were merely objective the while,—the source from which so many admirable results were to issue, and never so much as disturbed by the breath of his attachment. Is n't that so?”

“I 'd have said, 'You 're a very silly boy if you imagine that anything can come of all this. '”

“And if he were to ask for the reason, and say, 'Alice, are you not your own mistress, rich, free to do whatever you incline to do? Why should you call me a fool for loving you?'”

“Take my word for it, Bella, he 'll never risk the answer he 'd be sure to meet to such a speech,” said the other, haughtily; and Isabella, who felt a sort of awe of her sister at certain moments, desisted from the theme. “Look! yonder they go, Maitland and Rebecca, not exactly arm-inarm, but with bent-down heads, and that propinquity that implies close converse.”

“I declare I feel quite jealous,—I mean on your account, Bella,” said Mrs. Trafford.

“Never mind my interests in the matter, Alice,” said she, reddening; “it is a matter of the most complete indifference to me with whom he walks or talks. Mr. Norman Maitland is not to me one whit more of consequence than is Tony Butler to my sister.”

“That's a confession, Bella,—a confession wrung out of a hasty moment; for Tony certainly likes me, and I know it.”

“Well, then, the cases are not similar, for Mr. Maitland does not care for me; or, if he does, I don't know it, nor do I want to know it.”

“Come, darling, put on your shawl, and let us have a breezy walk on the cliffs before the day darkens; neither of these gentlemen are worth the slightest estrangement between such sisters as we are. Whether Tony likes me or not, don't steal him from me, and I 'll promise you to be just as loyal with regard to the other. How I 'd like to know what they are talking of there!”

As it is not impossible the reader may in some slight degree participate in the fair widow's sentiment, we mean to take up the conversation just as it reached the time in which the remark was applied to it. Miss Becky Graham was giving her companion a sketchy description of all the persons then at the Abbey, not taking any especial care to be epigrammatic or picturesque, but to be literal and truthful.

“Mrs. Maxwell,—an old horror,—tolerated just because she owns Tilney Park, and can leave it to whom she likes; and the Lyles hope it will fall to Mark, or, possibly, to Bella. They stand to win on either.”

“And which is the favorite?” asked Maitland, with a faint smile.

“You 'd like to think Isabella,” said Miss Becky, with a sharp piercing glance to read his thoughts at an unguarded moment, if he had such, “but she is not. Old Aunt Maxwell—she 's as much your aunt as theirs—detests girls, and has, I actually believe, thoughts of marrying again. By the way, you said you wanted money; why not 'go in' there? eight thousand a-year in land, real estate, and a fine old house with some great timber around it.”

“I want to pay my old debts, not incur new ones, my dear Miss Graham.”

“I 'm not your dear Miss Graham,—I 'm Beck, or Becky, or I 'm Miss Rebecca Graham, if you want to be respectful. But what do you say to the Maxwell handicap? I could do you a good turn there; she lets me say what I please to her.”

“I'd rather you'd give me that privilege with yourself, charming Rebecca.”

“Don't, I say; don't try that tiresome old dodge of mock flattery. I 'm not charming, any more than you are honest or straightforward. Let us be on the square—do you understand that? Of course you do? Whom shall I trot out next for you?—for the whole lot shall be disposed of without any reserve. Will you have Sir Arthur, with his tiresome Indian stories, enhanced to himself by all the lacs of rupees that are associated with them? Will you have the gay widow, who married for pique, and inherited a great fortune by a blunder? Will you have Isabella, who is angling for a coronet, but would not refuse you if you are rich enough? Will you have that very light dragoon, who thinks 'ours' the standard for manners in Europe?—or the two elder brothers, gray-headed, pale-faced, husky-voiced civil servants, working hard to make a fortune in advance of a liver complaint? Say the 'number' and the animal shall be led out for inspection.”

“After all, it is scarcely fair in me to ask it, for I don't come as a buyer.”

“Well, if you have a taste for that sort of thing—are we out of sight of the windows?—if so, let me have a cigarette like that you have there. I have n't smoked for five months. Oh! is n't it a pleasure?”

“Tell me about Mrs. Butler,—who is she?”

“She is Mrs. Butler; and her husband, when he was alive, was Colonel Butler, militarily known as Wat Tartar. He was a terrible pipeclay; and her son Tony is the factotum at the Abbey; or rather he was, till Mark told him to shave, a poodle, or singe a pony, or paint a wheelbarrow—I forget; but I know it was something he had done once out of good-humor, and the hussar creature fancied he'd make him do it again through an indignity.”

“And he—I mean Butler—stands upon being a gentleman?”

“I should think he does; is not his birth good?”

“Certainly; the Butlers are of an old stock.”

“They talk of an uncle, Sir Ramrod,—it is n't Ramrod, but it's like it,—a tiresome old fellow, who was envoy at Naples, and who married, I believe, a ballet-dancer, and who might leave Tony all his fortune, if he liked,—which he doesn't.”

“Having no family of his own?” asked Maitland, as he puffed his cigar.

“None; but that doesn't matter, for he has turned Jesuit, and will leave everything to the sacred something or other in Rome. I 've heard all that from old Widow Butler, who has a perfect passion for talking of her amiable brother-in-law, as she calls him. She hates him,—always did hate him,—and taught Tony to hate him; and with all that it was only yesterday she said to me that perhaps she was not fully justified in sending back unopened two letters he had written to her,—one after the loss of some Canadian bonds of hers, which got rumored abroad in the newspapers; the other was on Tony's coming of age; and she said, 'Becky, I begin to suspect that I had no right to carry my own unforgiveness to the extent of an injury to my boy,—tell me what you would do.'”

“And what was your answer?”

“I'd have made it up with the old swell. I'd say, 'Is not this boy more to you than all those long-petticoated tonsured humbugs, who can always cheat some one or other out of an Inheritance?' I 'd say, 'Look at him, and you'll fancy it's Walter telling you that he forgives you.'”

“If he be like most of his order, Miss Becky, he 'd only smile at your appeal,” said Maitland, coldly.

“Well, I 'd not let it be laughing matter with him, I can tell you; stupid wills are broken every day of the week, and I don't think the Jesuits are in such favor in England that a jury would decide for them against an English youth of the kith and kin of the testator.”

“You speak cleverly, Miss Graham, and you show that you know all the value that attaches to popular sympathy in the age we live in.”

“And don't you agree with me?”

“Ah, there's a deal to be said on either side.”

“Then, for Heaven's sake, don't say it. There—no—more to the left—there, where you see the blue smoke rising over the rocks—there stands the widow's cottage. I don't know how she endures the loneliness of it. Could you face such a life?”

“A double solitude—what the French call an egoisme À deux—is not so insupportable. In fact, it all depends upon 'the partner with whom we share our isolation.'” He threw a tone of half tenderness into the words that made them very significant, and Rebecca gave him one of her quick sudden glances with which she often read a secret motive. This time, however, she failed. There was nothing in that sallow but handsome face that revealed a clew to anything.

“I 'll have to ask Mrs. Butler's leave before I present you,” said she, suddenly.

“Of course, I 'll await her permission.”

“The chances are she'll say no; indeed, it is all but certain she will.”

“Then I must resign myself to patience and a cigar till you come out again,” said he, calmly.

“Shall I say that there's any reason for your visit? Do you know any Butlers, or have you any relationship, real or pretended, with the family, that would make a pretext for coming to see her?”

Had Miss Graham only glanced as keenly at Maitland's features now as she had a few moments back, she might have seen a faint, a very faint, flush cross his cheek, and then give way to a deep paleness. “No,” said he, coldly, “I cannot pretend the shadow of a claim to her acquaintance, and I can scarcely presume to ask you to present me as a friend of your own, except in the common acceptation given to the word.”

“Oh, I'll do that readily enough. Bless your heart, if there was anything to be gained by it, I 'd call you my cousin, and address you as Norman all the time of the visit.”

“If you but knew how the familiarity would flatter me, particularly were I to return it!”

“And call me Becky,—I hope! Well, you are a cool hand!”

“My friends are in the habit of amusing themselves with my diffidence and my timidity.”

“They must be very ill off for a pastime, then. I used to think Mark Lyle bad enough, but his is a blushing bash-fulness compared to yours.”

“You only see me in my struggle to overcome a natural defect. Miss Graham,—just as a coward assumes the bully to conceal his poltroonery; you regard in me the mock audacity that strives to shroud a most painful modesty.”

She looked full at him for an instant, and then burst into a loud and joyful fit of laughter, in which he joined without the faintest show of displeasure. “Well, I believe you are good-tempered,” said she, frankly.

“The best in the world; I am very seldom angry; I never bear malice.”

“Have you any other good qualities?” asked she, with a slight mockery in her voice.

“Yes,—many; I am trustful to the verge of credulity; I am generous to the limits of extravagance; I am unswerving in my friendships, and without the taint of a selfishness in all my nature.”

“How nice that is, or how nice it must be!”

“I could grow eloquent over my gifts, if it were not that my bashfulness might embarrass me.”

“Have you any faults?”

“I don't think so; at least I can't recall any.”

“Nor failings?”

“Failings! perhaps,” said he, dubiously; “but they are, after all, mere weaknesses,—such as a liking for splendor, a love of luxury generally, a taste for profusion, a sort of regal profusion in daily life, which occasionally jars with my circumstances, making me—not irritable, I am never irritable—but low-spirited and depressed.”

“Then, from what you have told me, I think I'd better say to Mrs. Butler that there 's an angel waiting outside who is most anxious to make her acquaintance.”

“Do so; and add that he 'll fold his wings, and sit on this stone till you come to fetch him.”

“Au revoir, Gabriel, then,” said she, passing in at the wicket, and taking her way through the little garden.

Maitland sat discussing in his own mind the problem how far Alcibiades was right or wrong in endeavoring to divert the world from any criticism of himself by a certain alteration in his dog's tail, rather opining that, in our day at least, the wiser course would have been to avoid all comment whatsoever,—the imputation of an eccentricity being only second to the accusation of a crime. With the Greeks of that day the false scent was probably a success; with the English of ours, the real wisdom is not to be hunted. “Oh, if it were all to be done again, how very differently I should do it!”

“Indeed, and in what respect?” said a voice behind his shoulder. He looked up, and saw Beck Graham gazing on him with something of interest in her expression. “How so?” cried she, again. Not in the slightest degree discomposed or flurried, he lay lazily back on the sward, and drawing his hand over his eyes to shade them from the sun, said, in a half-languid, weary tone, “If it were to do again, I 'd go in for happiness.”

“What do you mean by happiness?”

“What we all mean by it: an organized selfishness, that draws a close cordon round our home, and takes care to keep out, so far as possible, duns, bores, fevers, and fashionable acquaintances. By the way, is your visit ended, or will she see me?”

“Not to-day. She hopes to-morrow to be able. She asks if you are of the Maitlands of Gillie—Gillie—not 'crankie,' but a sound like it,—and if your mother's name was Janet.”

“And I trust, from the little you know of me, you assured her it could not be,” said he, calmly.

“Well, I said that I knew no more of your family than all the rest of us up at the Abbey, who have been sifting all the Maitlands in the three kingdoms in the hope of finding you.”

“How flattering! and at the same time how vain a labor! The name came to me with some fortune. I took it as I 'd have taken a more ill-sounding one for money! Who wouldn't be baptized in bank stock? I hope it's not on the plea of my mother being Janet, that she consents to receive me?”

“She hopes you are Lady Janet's son, and that you have the Maitland eyes, which it seems are dark, and a something in their manner which she assures me was especially captivating.”

“And for which, I trust, you vouched?”

“Yes. I said you were a clever sort of person, that could do a number of things well, and that I for one did n't quarrel with your vanity or conceit, but thought them rather good fun.”

“So they are! and we 'll laugh at them together,” said he, rising, and preparing to set out “What a blessing to find one that really understands me! I wish to heaven that you were not engaged!”

“And who says I am?” cried she, almost fiercely.

“Did I dream it? Who knows? The fact is, my dear Miss Becky, we do talk with such a rare freedom to each other, it is pardonable to mix up one's reveries with his actual information. How do you call that ruin yonder?”

“Dunluce.”

“And that great bluff beyond it?”

“Fairhead.”

“I 'll take a long walk to-morrow, and visit that part of the coast.”

“You are forgetting you are to call on Mrs. Butler.”

“So I was. At what hour are we to be here?”

“There is no question of 'we' in the matter; your modesty must make its advances alone.”

“You are not angry with me, cariasima Rebecca?”

“Don't think that a familiarity is less a liberty because it is dressed in a foreign tongue.”

“But it would 'out;' the expression forced itself from my lips in spite of me, just as some of the sharp things you have been saying to me were perfectly irrepressible?”

“I suspect you like this sort of sparring?”

“Delight in it”

“So do I. There's only one condition I make: whenever you mean to take off the gloves, and intend to hit out hard, that you 'll say so before. Is that agreed?”

“It's a bargain.”

She held out her hand frankly, and he took it as cordially; and in a hearty squeeze the compact was ratified.

“Shall I tell you,” said she, as they drew nigh the Abbey, “that you are a great puzzle to us all here? We none of us can guess how so great a person as yourself should condescend to come down to such an out-o'-the-world spot, and waste his fascinations on such dull company.”

“Your explanation, I 'll wager, was the true one: let me hear it.”

“I called it eccentricity; the oddity of a man who had traded so long in oddity that he grew to be inexplicable, even to himself, and that an Irish country-house was one of the few things you had not 'done,' and that you were determined to 'do' it.”

“There was that, and something more,” said Maitland, thoughtfully.

“The 'something more' being, I take it, the whole secret.”

“As you read me like a book, Miss Rebecca, all I ask is, that you 'll shut the volume when you 've done with it, and not talk over it with your literary friends.”

“It is not my way,” said she, half pettishly; and they reached the door as she spoke.