The Greatest Novels of Charles Reade. Charles Reade Reade

It was her father. "See-ho!" roared the jovial Squire. "I've found the hare on her form: bide thou outside a moment." And he entered the room; but he had no sooner closed the door than his whole manner changed from loud and jovial to agitated and subdued. "Kate, my girl," said he, piteously, "I have been a bad father to thee. I have spent all the money that should have been thine; thy poor father can scarce look thee in the face. So now I bring thee a good husband: be a good child now, and a dutiful. Neville's Court is his, and Neville's Cross will be, by the entail; and so will the baronetcy. I shall see my girl Lady Neville."

      "Never, papa, never," cried Kate.

      "Hush! hush!" said the Squire, and put up his hand to her in great agitation and alarm: "hush! or he will hear ye. Kate," he whispered, "are you mad? Little I thought, when he asked to see me, it was to offer marriage. Be a good girl now: don't you quarrel with good luck. You are not fit to be poor, and you have made enemies. Do but think how they will flout you when I die, and Bill's jade of a wife puts you to the door, as she will: and now you can triumph over them all; my Lady Neville; and make your poor father happy; my Lady Neville. Enough said, for I have promised you; so don't go and make a fool of me and yourself into the bargain. And—and—a word in your ear; he has lent me a hundred pounds."

      At this climax the father hung his head; the daughter winced and moaned out, "Papa! how could you?"

      Mr. Peyton had gradually descended to that intermediate stage of degradation, when the substance of dignity is all gone, but its shadow, shame, remains. He stamped impatiently on the ground, and cut his humiliation short by rushing out of the room. "Here, try your own luck, youngster," he cried at the door. "She knows my mind." He trampled down the stairs, and young George Neville knocked respectfully at the door, though it was half open; and came in with youth's light foot, and a handsome face flushed into beauty by love and hope.

      Miss Peyton's eye just swept him, as he entered, and with the same movement she turned away her fair head and blushing cheek towards the window; yet, must I own it, she quietly moulded the letter that lay in her lap, so that the address was no longer visible to the new-comer.

      Small secrecy, verging on deceit, you are bred in women's bones.

      This blushing and averted cheek is one of those equivocal receptions that have puzzled many a sensible man. It is a sign of coy love; it is a sign of gentle aversion; our mode of interpreting it is simple and judicious; whichever it happens to be we go and take it for the other.

      The brisk bold wooer that now engaged Kate Peyton was not the man to be dashed by a woman's coyness. Handsome, daring, good-humored, and vain, he had everything in his favor but his novelty.

      Look at Kate! her eye lingers wistfully on that disconsolate horseman whose every step takes him farther from her; but George has her ear, and draws closer and closer to it, and pours love's mellow murmurs into it.

      He told her he had made the grand tour, and seen the beauties of every land, but none like her; other ladies had certainly pleased his eye for a moment, but she alone had conquered his heart. He said many charming things to her, such as Griffith Gaunt had never said. Amongst the rest, he assured her the beauty of her person would not alone have fascinated him so deeply; but he had seen the beauty of her mind in those eyes of hers that seemed not eyes, but souls; and, begging her pardon for his presumption, he aspired to wed her mind.

      Such ideas had often risen in Kate's own mind; but to hear them from a man was new. She looked askant through the window at the lessening Griffith, and thought "how the grand tour improves a man!" and said as coldly as she could, "I esteem you, sir, and cannot but be flattered by sentiments so superior to those I am used to hear; but let this go no further. I shall never marry now."

      Instead of being angry at this, or telling her she wanted to marry somebody else, as the injudicious Griffith had done, young Neville had the address to treat it as an excellent jest, and drew such comical pictures of all the old maids in the neighborhood, that she could not help smiling.

      But the moment she smiled, the inflammable George made hot love to her again. Then she besought him to leave her, piteously. Then he said cheerfully he would leave her as soon as ever she had promised to be his. At that she turned sullen and haughty, and looked through the window and took no notice of him whatever. Then, instead of being discouraged or mortified, he showed imperturbable confidence and good humour, and begged archly to know what interesting object was in sight from that window. On this she blushed and withdrew her eyes from the window, and so they met his. On that he threw himself on his knees (custom of the day), and wooed her with such a burst of passionate and tearful eloquence that she began to pity him, and said she, lifting her lovely eyes, "Alas! I was born to make all those I esteem, unhappy;" and she sighed deeply.

      "Not a bit of it," said he; "you were born, like the sun, to bless all you shine upon. Sweet Mistress Kate, I love you as these country boors can never be taught to love. I lay my heart, my name, my substance, at your feet; you shall not be loved—you shall be worshipped. Ah! turn those eyes, brimful of soul, on me again, and let me try and read in them that one day, no matter how distant, the delight of my eyes, the joy of all my senses, the pride of Cumberland, the pearl of England, the flower of womankind, the rival of the angels, the darling of George Neville's heart, will be George Neville's wife."

      Fire and water were in his eyes, passion in every tone; his manly hand grasped hers and trembled, and drew her gently towards him.

      Her bosom heaved; his passionate male voice and manner electrified her, and made her flutter. "Spare me this pain," she faltered; and she looked through the window and thought, "Poor Griffith was right after all, and I was wrong. He had cause for jealousy, and CAUSE FOR FEAR."

      And then she pitied him who panted at her side, and then was sorry for him who rode away disconsolate, still lessening to her eye; and what with this conflict, and the emotion her quarrel with Griffith had already caused her, she leaned her head back against the shutter, and began to sob low, but almost hysterically.

      Now, Mr. George Neville was neither a fool nor a novice. If he had never been downright in love before (which I crave permission to doubt), he had gone far enough on that road to make one Italian lady, two French, one Austrian, and one Creole in love with him; and each of these love affairs had given him fresh insight into the ways of women. Enlightened by so many bitter-sweet experiences, he saw at once that there was something more going on inside Kate's heaving bosom than he could have caused by offering her his hand. He rose from his knees, and leaned against the opposite shutter, and fixed his eyes a little sadly, but very observantly, on her, as she leaned back against the shutter, sobbing low, but hysterically, and quivering all over.

      "There's some other man at the bottom of this," thought George Neville.

      "Mistress Kate," said he, gently, "I do not come here to make you weep. I love you like a gentleman; if you love another, take courage, tell me so, and don't let your father constrain your inclinations. Dearly as I love you, I would not wed your person and your heart another's; that would be too cruel to you, and (drawing himself up with sudden majesty) too unjust to myself."

      Kate looked up at him through her tears, and admired this man, who could love ardently, yet be proud and just. And if his appeal to her candor had been made yesterday, she would have said frankly, "There is one I—esteem." But, since the quarrel, she would not own to herself, far less to another, that she loved a man who had turned his back upon her. So she parried.

      "There is no one I love enough to wed," said she. "I am a cold-hearted girl, born to give pain to my betters. But I shall do something desperate to end all this."

      "All what?" said he, keenly.

      "The whole thing; my unprofitable life."

      "Mistress Kate," said Neville, "I asked you was there another man. If you had answered me 'In truth there is, but he is poor and my father is averse,' or the like; then I would have stood his friend, for your sake. But you say there is no man you love. Then I say you shall be Dame Neville."

      "What, whether I will or no?"

      "Yes; whether you think you will or no."

      Catherine turned her