Milly Darrell and Other Tales | Page 6

Bagshot was really fond of her.
Her father was travelling in Italy at this time, and did not often write to her--a fact that distressed her very much, I know; but she used to shake off her sorrow in a bright hopeful way that was peculiar to her, always making excuses for the dilatory correspondent. She loved him intensely, and keenly felt this separation from him; but the doctors had recommended him rest and change of air and scene, she told me, and she was glad to think he was obeying them.
Upon one of these half-holidays, when midsummer was near at hand, we were interrupted by an unwonted event, in the shape of a visit from a cousin of Milly's; a young man who occupied an important position in her father's house of business, and of whom she had sometimes talked to me, but not much. His name was Julian Stormont, and he was the only son of Mr. Darrell's only sister, long since dead.
It was a sultry afternoon, and we were spending it in a rustic summer-house at the end of a broad gravel that went the whole length of the large garden. Milly had her drawing materials on the table before her, but had not been using them. I was busy with a piece of fancy-work which Miss Susan Bagshot had given me to finish. We were sitting like this, when my old acquaintance Sarah, the housemaid, came to announce a visitor for Miss Darrell.
Milly sprang to her feet, flushed with excitement.
'It must be papa!' she cried joyfully.
'Lor', no, miss; don't you go to excite yourself like that. It isn't your pa; it's a younger gentleman.'
She handed Milly a card.
'Mr. Stormont!' the girl exclaimed, with a disappointed air; 'my cousin Julian. I am coming to him, of course, Sarah. But I wish you had given me the card at once.'
'Won't you go and do somethink to your hair, miss? most young ladies do.'
'O yes, I know; there are girls who would stop to have their hair done in Grecian plaits, if the dearest friend they had in the world was waiting for them in the drawing-room. My hair will do well enough, Sarah.--Come, Mary, you'll come to the house with me, won't you?'
'Lor', miss, here comes the gentleman,' said Sarah; and then decamped by an obscure side-path.
'I had better leave you to see him alone, Milly,' I said; but she told me imperatively to stay, and I stayed.
She went a little way to meet the gentleman, who seemed pleased to see her, but whom she received rather coldly, as I thought. But I had not long to think about it, before she had brought him to the summer-house, and introduced him to me.
'My cousin Julian--Miss Crofton.'
He bowed rather stiffly, and then seated himself by his cousin's side, and put his hat upon the table before him. I had plenty of time to look at him as he sat there talking of all sorts of things connected with Thornleigh, and Miss Darrell's friends in that neighbourhood. He was very good-looking, fair and pale, with regular well-cut features, and rather fine blue eyes; but I fancied those clear blue eyes had a cold look, and that there was an expression of iron will about the mouth and powerful prominent chin. The upper part of the face was thoughtful, and there were lines already on the high white forehead, from which the thin straight chestnut hair was carefully brushed. It was the face of a very clever man, I thought; but I was not so sure that it was the face of a man I could like, or whom I should be inclined to trust.
Mr. Stormont had a low pleasant voice and an agreeable manner of speaking. His way of treating his cousin was half deferential, half playful; but once, when I looked up suddenly from my work, I seemed to catch a glimpse of a deeper meaning in the cold blue eyes--a look of singular intensity fixed on Milly's bright face.
Whatever this look might mean, she was unconscious of it; she went on talking gaily of Thornleigh and her Thornleigh friends.
'I do so want to come home, Julian,' she said. 'Do you think there is any hope for me this midsummer?'
'I think there is every hope. I think it is almost certain you will come home.'
'O Julian, how glad I am!'
'But suppose there should be a surprise for you when you come home, Milly,--a change that you may not quite like, at first?'
'What change?'
'Has your father told you nothing?'
'Nothing, except about his journeys from place to place, and not much about them. He has written very seldom during the last six months.'
'He has been too much engaged, I suppose; and it's rather like him to have said nothing about it. How