Marion Fay: A Novel. Trollope Anthony

her feelings, – not of mine. It would be different were I to marry in the same degree."

      "Would it? Then I think that perhaps I had better counsel George not to go to Hendon Hall."

      "My sister is not there. They are all in Germany."

      "He had better not go where your sister will be thought of."

      "I would not quarrel with your son for all the world."

      "It will be better that you should. Do not suppose that I am pleading for him." That, however, was what he did suppose, and that was what she was doing. "I have told him already that I think that the prejudices will be too hard for him, and that he had better give it up before he adds to his own misery, and perhaps to hers. What I have said has not been in the way of pleading, – but only as showing the ground on which I think that such a marriage would be inexpedient. It is not that we, or our sister, are too bad or too low for such contact; but that you, on your side, are not as yet good enough or high enough."

      "I will not dispute that with you, Mrs. Roden. But you will give him my message?"

      "Yes; I will give him your message."

      Then Lord Hampstead, having spent a full hour in the house, took his departure and rode away.

      "Just an hour," said Clara Demijohn, who was still looking out of Mrs. Duffer's window. "What can they have been talking about?"

      "I think he must be making up to the widow," said Mrs. Duffer, who was so lost in surprise as to be unable to suggest any new idea.

      "He'd never have come with saddle horses to do that. She wouldn't be taken by a young man spending his money in that fashion. She'd like saving ways better. But they're his own horses, and his own man, and he's no more after the widow than he's after me," said Clara, laughing.

      "I wish he were, my dear."

      "There may be as good as him come yet, Mrs. Duffer. I don't think so much of their having horses and grooms. When they have these things they can't afford to have wives too, – and sometimes they can't afford to pay for either." Then, having seen the last of Lord Hampstead as he rode out of the Row, she went back to her mother's house.

      But Mrs. Demijohn had been making use of her time while Clara and Mrs. Duffer had been wasting theirs in mere gazing, and making vain surmises. As soon as she found herself alone the old woman got her bonnet and shawl, and going out slily into the Row, made her way down to the end of the street in the direction opposite to that in which the groom was at that moment walking the horses. There she escaped the eyes of her niece and of the neighbours, and was enabled to wait unseen till the man, in his walking, came down to the spot at which she was standing. "My young man," she said in her most winning voice, when the groom came near her.

      "What is it, Mum?"

      "You'd like a glass of beer, wouldn't you; – after walking up and down so long?"

      "No, I wouldn't, not just at present." He knew whom he served, and from whom it would become him to take beer.

      "I'd be happy to pay for a pint," said Mrs. Demijohn, fingering a fourpenny bit so that he might see it.

      "Thankye, Mum; no, I takes it reg'lar when I takes it. I'm on dooty just at present."

      "Your master's horses, I suppose?"

      "Whose else, Mum? His lordship don't ride generally nobody's 'orses but his own."

      Here was a success! And the fourpenny bit saved! His lordship! "Of course not," said Mrs. Demijohn. "Why should he?"

      "Why, indeed, Mum?"

      "Lord – ; Lord – ; – Lord who, is he?"

      The groom poked up his hat, and scratched his head, and bethought himself. A servant generally wishes to do what honour he can to his master. This man had no desire to gratify an inquisitive old woman, but he thought it derogatory to his master and to himself to seem to deny their joint name. "'Ampstead!" he said, looking down very serenely on the lady, and then moved on, not wasting another word.

      "I knew all along they were something out of the common way," said Mrs. Demijohn as soon as her niece came in.

      "You haven't found out who it is, aunt?"

      "You've been with Mrs. Duffer, I suppose. You two'd put your heads together for a week, and then would know nothing." It was not till quite the last thing at night that she told her secret. "He was a peer! He was Lord 'Ampstead!"

      "A peer!"

      "He was Lord 'Ampstead, I tell you," said Mrs. Demijohn.

      "I don't believe there is such a lord," said Clara, as she took herself up to bed.

      CHAPTER VII

THE POST OFFICE

      When George Roden came home that evening the matter was discussed between him and his mother at great length. She was eager with him, if not to abandon his love, at any rate to understand how impossible it was that he should marry Lady Frances. She was very tender with him, full of feeling, full of compassion and sympathy; but she was persistent in declaring that no good could come from such an engagement. But he would not be deterred in the least from his resolution, nor would he accept it as possible that he should be turned from his object by the wishes of any person as long as Lady Frances was true to him. "You speak as if daughters were slaves," he said.

      "So they are. So women must be; – slaves to the conventions of the world. A young woman can hardly run counter to her family on a question of marriage. She may be persistent enough to overcome objections, but that will be because the objections themselves are not strong enough to stand against her. But here the objections will be very strong."

      "We will see, mother," he said. She who knew him well perceived that it would be vain to talk to him further.

      "Oh, yes," he said, "I will go out to Hendon, perhaps on Sunday. That Mr. Vivian is a pleasant fellow, and as Hampstead does not wish to quarrel with me I certainly will not quarrel with him."

      Roden was generally popular at his office, and had contrived to make his occupation there pleasant to himself and interesting; but he had his little troubles, as will happen to most men in all walks of life. His came to him chiefly from the ill-manners of a fellow-clerk who sat in the same room with him, and at the same desk. There were five who occupied the apartment, an elderly gentleman and four youngsters. The elderly gentleman was a quiet, civil, dull old man, who never made himself disagreeable, and was content to put up with the frivolities of youth, if they did not become too uproarious or antagonistic to discipline. When they did, he had but one word of rebuke. "Mr. Crocker, I will not have it." Beyond that he had never been known to go in the way either of reporting the misconduct of his subordinates to other superior powers, or in quarrelling with the young men himself. Even with Mr. Crocker, who no doubt was troublesome, he contrived to maintain terms of outward friendship. His name was Jerningham, and next to Mr. Jerningham in age came Mr. Crocker, by whose ill-timed witticisms our George Roden was not unfrequently made to suffer. This had sometimes gone so far that Roden had contemplated the necessity of desiring Mr. Crocker to assume that a bond of enmity had been established between them; – or in other words, that they were not "to speak" except on official subjects. But there had been an air of importance about such a proceeding of which Crocker hardly seemed to be worthy; and Roden had abstained, putting off the evil hour from day to day, but still conscious that he must do something to stop vulgarities which were distasteful to him.

      The two other young men, Mr. Bobbin and Mr. Geraghty, who sat at a table by themselves and were the two junior clerks in that branch of the office, were pleasant and good-humoured enough. They were both young, and as yet not very useful to the Queen. They were apt to come late to their office, and impatient to leave it when the hour of four drew nigh. There would sometimes come a storm through the Department, moved by an unseen but powerful and unsatisfied Æolus, in which Bobbin and Geraghty would be threatened to be blown into infinite space. Minutes would be written and rumours spread about; punishments would be inflicted, and it would be given to be understood that now one and then the other would certainly have to return to his disconsolate family at the very next offence. There was a question at this very moment whether Geraghty, who had come from the sister island about twelve months