structress. Her mode of teaching, her training, her companionship, all appear to me to be admirable for a young girl.”
“Let her stop on, then. Lucy’s instruction is the chief point. As to a little pride or pretension, or whatever you may term it, it will do no harm. A wind inflating the sails ahead won’t topple over the ship.”
Jane said no more. Of course Lucy’s instruction was of paramount importance, and Jane was not one to merge weighty matters in trifles. Lord Oakburn returned to his newspaper, and there ensued a silence. Presently he looked up, and spoke abruptly.
“When do you intend to see after Clarice?”
Jane’s heart gave a great bound, and she dropped a needle in her consternation. So entirely taken by surprise was she, that she could only look up in silence. At that very moment she was trying to frame an inoffensive way of putting the selfsame question—and now he had spoken it! The flush of emotion illumined her face, tinging even her drooping eyelids.
“Papa! may I see after her? Will you allow it?”
“If you don’t, I shall,” said the earl.
“It is what I have been longing to do,” returned Jane, “Every morning for this long while past, I have been resolving to speak to you, papa, and every night, when the night came, I have reproached myself for not having had the courage to do so. May Clarice come home again?”
“Well, I don’t know what you may deem ship-shape, but in my opinion it is scarcely the thing for Lady Clarice Chesney to be flourishing abroad as a governess.”
“It has been wrong all along; doubly wrong since the change in our position occurred. But, papa, I did mention her name to you at the time of Lord Oakburn’s death,” Jane deprecatingly added, as a reminder, “and you bade me be silent and let Clarice come to her senses.”
“But she doesn’t come to them, my Lady Jane,” retorted the earl, giving a few exasperated raps with his stick to enforce his words,—a plaything which he had by no means forgotten the use of. “Here are the weeks and months creeping on, and she never gives token that she has come to them, or that she is coming to them. Obstinate little minx!”
“Papa, it is possible that she may not have heard of the change in our position. It is very unlikely, certainly, that she should not; but still it is just possible.”
“Rubbish! it’s not possible,” cried the earl, in his own domineering manner. “It is her pride that stands in the way, Jane; she has been holding a tacit battle with us, you see, waiting for us to give way first.”
“Yes, I have thought that must be it. Clarice was always self-willed, the same as—as———”
“The same as who?” thundered the earl, believing that Jane was impertinently alluding to himself.
“As Laura, I was going to say, papa. Forgetting that you had forbidden her name to be mentioned before you.”
Jane had indeed forgotten it. The earl’s brow grew hot with anger, and he rose to pace the room, giving Jane a little of his mind, and the floor of his stick, some of his words being more suitable to the quarter-deck of his old vessel in Portsmouth Harbour, than to his London drawing-room.
“Don’t you talk of Laura before me again, Jane. She has chosen her own home and abandoned mine; let her abide by it. But Clarice’s sin was lighter, look you, and she shall be forgiven. I suppose you know where she is.”
“No, I do not, papa.”
Lord Oakburn stopped in his walk: the denial had evidently surprised him.
“Not know!” he repeated, gazing sternly at Jane. “I was given to understand that you did know. Clarice writes to you.”
“I do not know exactly where she is,” explained Jane. “It is somewhere in the neighbourhood of Hyde Park, I believe, and I have no doubt she will be easily found. When I write to her, I send my letters to a library there, by Clarice’s directions, and I should think they can give me her address. Oh papa, I have so longed to go there and ask for it!”
“You can go now,” bluntly rejoined the earl. “Shall you be an hour getting ready?”
“I shall not be five minutes,” replied Jane, the glad tears standing in her eyes, as she laid her work aside. Lord Oakburn rang the bell, and a man came in.
“The carriage for Lady Jane.”
But before the servant could retire, Jane interposed. “Stay an instant, Wilson. Papa, I think I had better not take the carriage. I would rather go on foot, quietly.”
“Then you won’t go quietly,” returned the earl. “Do you hear, sir? What do you stand gaping there for? The carriage instantly for Lady Jane.”
Wilson flew off as if he had been shot. The new servants had become accustomed to these explosions of the earl’s; but, with all his hot temper, he was a generous master.
Jane, for once, did not give up her point