A Mere Chance: A Novel. Vol. 2

Ada Cambridge

A Mere Chance: A Novel. Vol. 2

CHAPTER I.

ANOTHER RASH PROMISE

MR. KINGSTON, as soon as he received Mrs. Thornley's invitation, sent a telegram to her nearest post-town, to tell her he would start for Adelonga on the following day, and await at the inn where he left the railway the buggy she was kind enough to say should be sent to meet him.

There was much amusement at Adelonga over this unwonted promptitude on the part of an idle and self-indulgent man, who had never been known to hurry himself, or to go into the country willingly; and Rachel was teased in fun and congratulated in earnest on the strong hold she had gained upon his erewhile erratic affections.

The buggy was ordered at once – Mr. Thornley's own pet Abbott buggy, that floated over the rough roads – and a pet pair of horses were harnessed into it, and another pair sent forward to change with them on the way, and Mr. Thornley himself set forth to meet his guest.

Next day Lucilla ordered one of her best rooms – usually reserved for married ladies – to be prepared for him, and had great consultations with her cook on his behalf; and at about five in the afternoon he arrived, wrapped in a fur-collared overcoat, like a traveller in bleak and barren regions, and had a royal welcome.

Lucilla, followed by her mother, went out to the verandah to meet her old friend – though, indeed, she never willingly omitted that graceful act of hospitality, whoever might be her guest – and was delighted to receive again the same old compliment on her charming appearance that had pleasantly befooled her in her maiden days. Mrs. Hardy was likewise greeted with effusion, and responded cordially; and then they all looked round.

"Where is Rachel?" inquired Mr. Kingston, with anxious solicitude; "isn't she well?"

Rachel was found in the drawing-room, nervously rearranging the cups and saucers that had just been brought in for tea. Lucilla ushered him in with a smile, and discreetly retired with her mother, upon some utterly unnecessary errand.

The lovers met in the middle of the room, and Rachel went through the ordeal that she had been vaguely dreading all day. It was worse than she had expected, for she felt, by some subtle, newly-developed sense, that she had been greatly missed and ardently longed for, and that they were truly lover's arms that folded her, trembling and shrinking, in that apparently interminable embrace.

She had not yet come to realise the magnitude and the ignominy of the wrong that she was doing him, but a pang of remorseful pity did hurt her somewhere, through all her stony irresponsiveness, for the fate that had driven him, the desired of so many women, to set his heart at last upon one who did not want it.

For a brief intolerable moment she felt that she had it in her to implore him to release her from her engagement, but – well, she was a little coward, if the truth must be told.

And, moreover, she had not quite come to the point of giving up her pink boudoir, and her diamond necklace, and all her other splendid possessions in prospect, because she could not love the contingent husband as was her duty to him to do.

She did not know as yet that she loved another man.

"And you never came to meet me?" said Mr. Kingston, with tender reproach, as he led her by one reluctant hand to a sofa that was wheeled up comfortably to the fireside. "And I was straining my eyes all across the paddock, to see you on the verandah looking out."

"I was looking out," said Rachel; "I saw the buggy before it reached the woolshed. But – "

"But you thought it would be nicer to have our meeting here, with no one to look on? So it is, darling; you were quite right. I could not have helped kissing you, if all the servants on the place had been standing round; and one doesn't like to make a public exhibition of one's self. Oh, my pet, I am so glad to get you again! And how are you? Let me have a good look at you. Oh, if you are going to blush, how am I to tell whether you are looking well or not?"

"I am not go