Lady Hester | Page 5

could see she meant to
plead for him. She had her chance, for Sir John Ormerod brought
matters to a crisis at the next ball; and though she thought, as she said,
"she had settled him," he followed it up with her guardian, and Adela
was invited to a conference in the library.
It happened that as she ran upstairs, all in a glow, she came on
Torwood at the landing. She couldn't help saying in her odd half-
laughing, half-crying voice--

"It will come right, Torwood; I've made terms, I'm out of your way."
"Not Ormerod!" he exclaimed.
"Oh! no, no!" I can hear her dash of scorn now, for I was just behind
my brother, but she went on out of breath--
"You may go on seeing her, provided you don't say a word--till--till
she's been out two years."
"Adela! you queen of girls, how have you done it?" he began, but she
thrust him aside and flew up into my arms; and when I had her in her
own room it came out, I hardly know how, that she had so shown that
she cared for no one she had ever seen except my father, that they
found they did love each other; and--and--in short they were going to
be married."
Really it seemed much less wonderful then than it does in thinking of it
afterwards. My father was much handsomer than any young man I ever
saw, with a hawk nose, a clear rosy skin, pure pink and white like a
boy's, curly little rings of white hair, blue eyes clear and bright as the
sky, a tall upright soldierly figure, and a magnificent stately bearing,
courteous and grand to all, but sweetly tender to a very few, and to her
above all. It always had been so ever since he had brought her home an
orphan of six years old from her mother's death-bed at Nice. And he
was youthful, could ride or hunt all day without so much fatigue as
either of his sons, and was as fresh and eager in all his ways as a lad.
And she, our pretty darling! I don't think Torwood and I in the least felt
the incongruity of her becoming our step-mother, only that papa was
making her more entirely his own.
I am glad we did not mar the sunshine. It did not last long. She came
home thoroughly unwell from their journey to Switzerland, and never
got better. By the time the spring had come round again, she was lying
in the vault at Trevorsham, and we were trying to keep poor little
Alured alive and help my poor father to bear it.

He was stricken to the very heart, and never was the same man again.
His age seemed to come upon him all at once; and whereas at sixty-
five he had been like a man ten years younger, he suddenly became like
one ten years older; and though he never was actually ill, he failed from
month to month.
He could not bear the sight or sound of the poor baby. Poor Adela had
scarcely lived to hear it was a boy, and all she had said about it was,
"Ursula, you'll be his mother." And, oh! I have tried. If love would do it,
I think he could not be more even to dear Adela!
What a frail little life it was! What nights and days we had with him;
doctors saying that skill could not do it, but care might; and nurses
knowing how to be more effective than I could be; yet while I durst not
touch him I could not bear not to see him. And I do think I was the first
person he began to know.
Meantime, there was a great difference in Torwood. He had been very
much of a big boy hitherto. No one but myself could have guessed that
he cared for much besides a lazy kind of enjoyment of all the best and
nicest things in this world. He did what he was told, but in an
uninterested sort of way, just as if politics and county business, and
work at the estate, were just as much tasks thrust on him as Virgil and
Homer had been; and put his spirit into sporting, &c.
But when he was allowed to think hopefully of Emily, it seemed to
make a man of him, and he took up all that he had to do, as if it really
concerned him, and was not only a burden laid on him by his father.
And, as my father became less able to exert himself, Torwood came
forward more, and was something substantial to lean upon. Dear fellow!
I am sure he did well earn the consent he gained