Chapter 7

To the annoyance and dismay of Rachel, who had many things she wished to discuss with Jane, and to the politely concealed boredom of Rachel’s mother, Charlotte and Lady Selsea came round to call at York Buildings that very afternoon, and the ladies all sat together for upwards of an hour.

Lady Selsea had much to tell her sister about the company at Lord Fortuneswell’s, the conversation, the excursions, the music, the cards, the violent detestation between Fortuneswell’s wife and his sister, the old-fashioned notions of his mother, the reprehensible habits of his son “— the merest puppy, sister, I can assure you that dear Charlotte very quickly saw through the falsity of his pretensions and flirtatious looks!” — and the tiresome affectations and fine airs of his two daughters. “Just because their grandfather was a duke they seemed to think they had a right to behave towards my poor Charlotte as if she were a stupid nobody!”

“Indeed?” said Mrs Campbell, raising her brows. “I wonder you care to visit a house where, it seems, you can have so little cause for enjoyment.”

“Well, but, sister, it is the most elegant establishment in the south country, and half the ton was there; one would be thought quite singular to stay away from such a party.”

Meanwhile Charlotte, her small blue eyes fastening sharply on every detail of her cousin’s unimpressive toilette, was in a perfect spate of communication with Rachel, who sat listening with a look of mingled distaste and incomprehension on her face.

Both visiting ladies, of course, wholly ignored Jane, who remained silent in a corner, wishing heartily that she might remove herself to another room and practise “Robin Adair” (Matt’s favourite song) on the rented pianoforte which the Colonel’s kindness had procured for the girls.

When the visit was concluding — “And shall we look forward to seeing you again this evening at the Assembly, sister?” said Lady Selsea.

“My dear Lady Selsea, not on any account,” responded her sister gladly. “I assure you, I have better things to do with my time. But I believe that James will be there, for he thinks it his duty to escort the girls, and our mother, of course, and Mrs Consett.”

“Ah yes — Mamma — how does she go on?” inquired Lady Selsea, who had up to this moment shown no particular solicitude as to the health or whereabouts of her parent.

“She has struck up a friendship with Mrs Churchill, and they are at present trying out the new hot-sea-water douche. No doubt she will tell you all about it tonight.”

With effusive farewells for sister and cousin, and the slightest of token bows for Jane, the visitors departed.

“Charlotte really is a d-d-detestable p-person,” burst out Rachel, as soon as she and Jane were alone in their chamber. “D-Do you know, she collects p-proposals? She says she has had f-fifteen offers already, and shows no m-more true f-feeling about them than if they were a box full of shoe-roses!”

“Fifteen proposals of marriage?” exclaimed Jane in amazement, and when Rachel nodded, “I do not believe it! Or if so, they must have been from very frippery suitors. I cannot think any sensible man would wish to marry her.”

“No, she is a s-selfish, cold-hearted girl. Do you know, she was praising the style of my hair (my gown of course she dismissed as beneath contempt) and when I told her that you had done it, and your own also, she seemed taken aback for a moment, and then said, with s-such a curl of the lip — ‘Oh, then I suppose she can always be sure of a post as a lady’s maid! That is, if my uncle does not propose to dower her?’ — giving me a most inquisitive glance!”

“What did you say?”

“L-Luckily at that moment my aunt rose to take leave. I merely g-gave her a look!”

Jane said with a sigh, “I wish that I could obtain a post as lady’s maid. I believe it would be much more amusing than teaching spoiled brats. Most ladies get on very comfortably with their maids — well, they have to, after all, or they would be continually pinched and tweaked and sent down to dinner with their hair in a snarl. I should enjoy dressing my ladies elegantly, and arranging their hair in handsome new fashions — for which you must admit I have a decided talent.”

She was engaged in dressing Rachel’s hair as she talked, setting grape-like clusters of curls on either side, to give added width to Rachel’s narrow features, catching up a swathe at the back in an opera-comb. Rachel had begged for this style, which was much in vogue at the moment, but Jane did not privately think it very becoming to her friend.

“Nobody else will have such a b-bang up fashion,” Rachel said contentedly, admiring her bunches of curls in the glass. “It will give me great confidence.”

“Rachel! You had better not let Mrs Consett hear you employing such language. You have been talking to the Dixon boys too much.”

Rachel laughed. “Perfectly true. Do you know — I could see that Charlotte envies us our friends. I think th-that was why she was so anxious to make sure that we would be at the Assembly.”

“Because she wishes to make sure that Matt and Sam and Frank Churchill are there also — oh, Rachel! Do you think she hopes to add our friends to her list of declarations?”

The two girls stared at one another in dismay.

“What a d-disgusting notion!” said Rachel. But then she laughed. “S-Still, I think our friends would have more sense.”

“Perhaps we had best warn them to make their declarations to her at once, without delay, so as to be done with them,” agreed Jane. “Which muslin shall you wear — the tamboured, or the jaconet?”

“The tamboured — the green with a tiny silver thread. Will that do?”

“Your favourite — very elegant!” Jane assured her. “Something tells me that your cousin Charlotte will be far too fine, grossly overdressed, in order to show us poor dowds the proper style for ladies who associate with dukes’ daughters.”

“N-Now I am afraid you are not d-displaying a proper spirit of charity!”

Lady Selsea and her daughter had remained talking so long that the girls were obliged to scramble through their dressing, and, even so, dinner was late, which put the Colonel, who had a military passion for punctuality, into one of his bad tempers. Also the afternoon’s drive had set his lame leg to throbbing painfully.

“Speak louder, girl!” he suddenly bawled at Rachel, having failed to catch one of her soft-voiced remarks, which startled her so greatly that she dropped and broke her glass, which a servant had just filled with lemonade, spilling its contents over her green gauze dress.

“Now look what you have done — bungling, clumsy girl!”

“Oh dear — I am so sorry!” gasped Rachel, and Mrs Campbell calmly said, “You will have to change your gown, Rachel; you cannot possibly go to the Assembly dripping like a mermaid!”

“I — I do not mind it. It is of no consequence,” protested Rachel, but all the older ladies cried out at the foolhardiness of such an idea.

“To go out in a wet gown! Quite wild! Besides being very improper — giving rise to all manner of ineligible notions about your upbringing.”

“Do as your mother bids you!” thundered the Colonel, in such a voice that two drops of dark blood fell on Rachel’s plate. Jane, aghast, sprang up.

“Yes, come, Rachel, do — I will help you change very quickly — we shall be back before you have done drinking tea,” she promised, seeing the Colonel’s furious scowl and glance at the clock. As they fled from the room he sat angrily tapping his gold watch.

“Bring some ice — quickly!” Jane called to one of the maids, swathing her napkin around Rachel’s neck; and she persuaded Rachel to lie back in an armchair with ice packed on her nose and forehead while the fastenings of her gown were undone.

“There: it has stopped. And what a mercy there is no blood on your dress — only lemonade, which will wash out. I am sure I read somewhere that to spill water is lucky — perhaps lemonade is luckier still — perhaps it will bring you fifteen offers of marriage like your cousin Charlotte!”

Jane was gabbling at random in order to soothe Rachel who, she could see, was still painfully shocked and startled by her father’s outburst, the first of its kind for some time. Tears stood in her eyes, and her hands shook.

“What shall you put on instead of the green?”

“I don’t care. It is all one,” muttered Rachel, allowing herself, however, to be divested of her sopping petticoats.

“Well then, how about the pink mull and your corals? They bring out the colour in your cheeks.” Privately Jane thought this gown more becoming to Rachel than her favourite green, and she swiftly fetched it and fastened the tiny buttons before any objections could be raised.

“Oh, how unfortunate! Now your hair is tumbled, and I fear there will be no time to re-curl all those clusters —”

“It is of no consequence,” Rachel said again, listlessly.

“It certainly is of consequence. Your first ball! But there is no sense putting the Colonel in a passion. I know! I will dress it à La Sauvage — I was studying a picture of that in La Belle Assemblée while we were waiting for your grandmother in Harvey’s Library yesterday, and I know just how it should be done. Then you will look exactly like a Parisienne.”

And, sure enough, in very little time, Jane’s clever fingers had built up a wild but impressive turret of brown hair on her friend’s head, interspersed with plumes and spangles.

“There! No, do not stop to study yourself — you look very stylish — and it is perfectly safe — guaranteed to survive even a country-dance — Charlotte will be green with envy — your coral fan and gloves — come!”

Clasping her friend’s hand, Jane made Rachel positively run down the stairs, so that she arrived in the hall with unwonted colour in her cheeks.

The Colonel, hat, gloves and greatcoat already assumed, stood there tapping his foot impatiently, but during the girls’ absence he had been obliged to undergo a fairly thorough trimming from his wife as to the thoughtlessness of upsetting his daughter before her first public ball.

“Just when we wanted her to be at her best. It was really inconsiderate of you, James!”

And Mrs Fitzroy had weighed in with a whole shower of sweetly barbed conversational darts. Therefore, when the girls reappeared, the Colonel merely remarked, “That is well. Now let us be off,” and hurried his party from the house without passing remark upon his daughter’s changed appearance, (which, at another time, he might have strongly criticized,) or, indeed, appearing to take it in at all.

The Assembly Rooms, on the first floor of the Royal Hotel, were already beginning to fill when the Campbell party climbed the stairs, and the joyous tuning scrape of strings could be heard. A military band from the regiment quartered at Radipole Barracks was to play.

The large ballroom, brilliant with lights, had as yet only a sparse company scattered over its bare waxed floor, and the older ladies in their satin gowns lost no time in appropriating seats near to the fire. A number of officers in red coats were strolling about, in and out of the card-room, and new arrivals, chaperons with their carefully dressed and adorned charges, continually surged up the stairs. Much to the comfort of Rachel and Jane the Dixon family soon made an appearance, surrounding the Campbells in a friendly group. They were accompanied by Frank Churchill, who came smiling up to Jane, claiming, it seemed, the right of taking on from where their conversation had broken off that afternoon.

“My aunt was not well enough to undergo the fatigue of such an evening; and my uncle remains to keep her company. But they have given me leave to enjoy myself —” with a smile that was half irony, half straightforward anticipation of the evening’s pleasures. “May I congratulate you, Miss Fairfax? You have always such an air of elegance, especially when you wear white.”

“Why, thank you,” she replied, rather inattentively. “But, Mr Churchill, listen, will you render me a service?” — in a low tone, glancing behind her to make certain that both Rachel and Rachel’s father were out of earshot, on the other side of the fireplace, talking to Mrs Dixon.

“Of course! Need you ask? Anything that lies within my power.” The real kindness underlying his words could not be mistaken.

“Then — if you please — make much of Rachel this evening! She has received such a set-down from her father earlier tonight. And her spirits are so very easily overthrown.” In a few swift words Jane gave Frank Churchill the history of what had passed. “The Colonel — wretched man — never realises how severely he can undermine her confidence. Pray, Mr Churchill, will you do all that is in your power to ensure that she enjoys herself?”

“Trust me, Miss Fairfax! and I shall urge Matt to do likewise; we shall see that she never lacks for a partner. You are a good friend, Miss Fairfax!”

He bowed, raising her hand to his lips with a sparkling look of complicity. Then he was threading his way through the crowd near the fireplace, to the side of Rachel, who, with the leaping firelight illuminating her rose-coloured gown and piled bright-brown hair, was not at all aware of the interested glances that she was eliciting from strangers as well as friends. Frank spoke a few words to her, Jane saw her give him a pleased, friendly nod, and, the orchestra at that moment striking up, a set began forming, and Frank Churchill led Rachel out on to the floor. Matt Dixon at the same moment approached Jane and asked for the favour of her hand.

“Thank you! I shall be most happy!” she told him with truth. “How is your brother this evening?”

“Well enough, as you see, to be here, but not well enough to dance. He will keep my mother company. He has charged me to inform you that you resemble Finuala, the daughter of Lir; which I am sure I have no need to do, as you must know it already.”

“Indeed I do not! Who was Finuala?”

“She was a sea-nymph, daughter of a sea-god; and she was changed to a swan.”

Jane thanked him inattentively, as they took their places; the music was making her feet tingle with the wish to be dancing. But, as they were about to begin, they were halted by a disagreeable voice in Jane’s ear. It was that of Mr Gillender.

“Hey-dey, Miss? How is this? I thought you and I were engaged to dance together? Here was I, firmly believing that we were bespoke, and now I see you stand up with somebody else! Did I not ask you this afternoon, out by that damned dull lake?”

“Yes, sir, you asked me,” replied Jane coolly, “but at the time it was not expected that our party would attend the ball, and if you recall, I did not accept your kind offer.”

“Well, upon my soul, that’s calm! Now here am I, high and dry for lack of a partner! For Miss Selsea is dancing with Dalrymple —”

“I am sure, sir, the master of ceremonies will soon introduce you to any number of eligible young ladies.”

“No such young ladies as I find tolerable!”

Fortunately the demands of the dance now removed Jane and her partner from Mr Gillender’s vicinity; but throughout the two dances he kept reappearing at her elbow, from time to time, in the most unwelcome manner, and breaking into her conversation with Matt, who, though in general good-humoured, exclaimed when at last Mr Gillender took himself off into the card-room, “That is a most pestilential fellow! At Cambridge he was thought to be clever, but I could never see it. I always found him a dead bore.”

“Oh, so you have known him at Cambridge?”

“A very little.” A shade of discomfort seemed at that moment to pass over Matt’s face, but it was gone so fast that Jane thought she might have imagined it.

“Do tell me some more about your home in Ireland,” she said. “I have such a curiosity to hear about it. The local people sound so very delightful.”

And eagerly, as they danced, he continued to do so. Jane presently observed Charlotte, with an expression of strong displeasure on her countenance, not far removed from them in the set. Jane she wholly ignored, but bestowed a gracious smile upon her partner when they passed one another in the set.

“Charlotte is not at all pleased with us,” murmured Rachel some time later as they stood getting breath back after the first two dances.

“Well it is not our fault that she arrived too late to lead off the first set! And she can hardly complain about her partner! Is not that Lord Felix Dalrymple?”

“Yes — but do not you think him very puny and disagreeable-looking? He asked me to dance, but I was very happy to be able to tell him that I am engaged throughout the evening.”

Indeed Rachel, to her own astonishment, found that she was positively the belle of the ball, her hand being eagerly sought by many who had observed her dancing with Frank Churchill; she danced and danced, her cheeks pink, her eyes shining; while Frank and Matt kept vigilant, though unobtrusive watch to make sure that she was never, at any time, neglected or left without a partner.

Jane herself had quite as much success as she could wish, dancing nearly every dance and receiving a number of compliments, the majority of which she privately thought very silly.

“It was hard luck upon Charlotte,” she told Rachel at supper when they sat with the boys, “that your dress is so much prettier than hers, since they are both of the same colour. But hers is too bright.”

“You were right in prophesying that it would be overtrimmed! I heard Grandmamma telling her that she should remove all that floss and spangled fringe; it made her like a Punch-and-Judy show, Grandma said. Poor Charlotte!”

It was certainly, for Charlotte, a new and disagreeable experience that her insipid prettiness should, for the length of an evening, be outshone by her plain cousin’s unpredictable beauty; and she bore it ill.

“Where in the world did you pick up that notion of doing your hair, Rachel?” she disagreeably demanded, when they were all drinking orgeat in the tea-room. “It resembles nothing so much as a heron’s-nest. Oh! I suppose Miss — thing — did it for you?”

“The style is called La Sauvage, and is all the crack in Paris at present,” Mrs Fitzroy told her tartly. “It becomes Rachel very well. James! This so-called orgeat is nothing but weak barley-water. Can you not procure us some tea?”

The Colonel grumpily did so, then retired to the card-room, where he had spent most of the evening.

After the tea interval there were two more dances. Frank Churchill, as before, danced with Rachel, and Matt, ignoring a beckoning glance from Charlotte, asked Jane if she would again be his partner.

“With pleasure, sir!” — evading a hopeful officer just approaching.

Fortunately the disgruntled Mr Gillender had departed, as he threatened to do, earlier in the evening “to take himself to a gaming hell” whispered Frank; and Robert Selsea had retired to the card-room to play cassino. After two dances with Jane he had announced his intention of standing up with her again later, but she was relieved at his failure to do so, for she found his conversation, which was entirely about terriers and rat-hunting, singularly dull and, at times, almost incomprehensible.

“Well, girls? Did you enjoy the ball?” inquired Mrs Campbell, rousing herself from heaps of Parliamentary reports to receive a glass of negus from her husband. With a little surprise she eyed Rachel’s flushed, animated countenance.

“Oh, yes, Mamma! It was very p-pleasant — was it not, Jane?”

“Rachel had a splendid success!” Jane told Mrs Campbell. “She was the cynosure of all eyes. Was it not so, Colonel Campbell?”

“Why yes — I suppose so — that is, she did not appear to lack for partners —”

But the Colonel, like his mother-in-law, was in a state of acute suffering from tired feet, aching leg, and rheumatic joints; he could not wait to escape to bed. Mrs Fitzroy, in like state, merely said that Charlotte Selsea looked a sight; the girl had no more dress-sense than a Hottentot.

“I shall hear all about it in the morning,” promised Mrs Campbell.

In the morning, however, she received by the mail such an exceedingly gloomy report on the working conditions of mantua-makers that she had no leisure to bestow on her daughter.

But directly after breakfast Charlotte and her brother came round from the White Hart Inn.

“We have arranged a party to Corfe. Come along! These affairs are no fun unless there are plenty of people — numbers are everything. We have your friends the Dixons — and Mr Churchill — and several more. Come along!”

Very reluctantly, Jane and Rachel were obliged to join the excursion. Indeed, during the next week they found themselves continually in the company of Charlotte Selsea and her brother; not from any wish of being so but because, without open discourtesy, there seemed no way to evade these unwelcome incomers. Charlotte and her brother and friend indefatigably arranged picnics, promenades, sightseeing excursions, bathing parties; it seemed plain that the two males followed this programme because that was their chosen way of leading their lives, in continual pursuit of amusement; they must be entertained, even if it bored them. Charlotte, it was equally evident, was after more definite game. On all of their outings, Matt Dixon was her escort; she rode at his side, sat by him on rocks or fallen trees, peered through the telescope he held for her, searched for shells and fossils with him, picked wild-flowers with him. And all the time she continually talked to him in her flat chirping little monotone, telling him tales of doings in high society; amazingly dull, insipid tales they seemed to Jane, if she should chance to overhear a phrase or two, but Matt listened as if entranced.

She has put a spell on him, Jane thought. She has bewitched him.

Rachel seemed utterly stricken at the defection of her dear friend; so much that Jane did not dare discuss the matter with her. It was too painful. She grew pale, and much thinner; her appetite declined; her stammer returned.

“Make haste!” cried Charlotte, coming in one morning before breakfast was done. “There is no time to be lost! We are all going to Abbotsbury and the Chesil Bank. Robert has bespoken a carriage for you at the hotel, and he will drive you; I daresay your companion-lady will not object to sitting bodkin? Or perhaps Miss Fairfax may prefer to remain behind?”

“Going to Abbotsbury? Pray, whom do you mean by ‘we all’?” dourly demanded the Colonel. His niece airily replied,

“Oh, Robert and I, and Tom Gillender, and your friends the Dixons and their mother and Mr Churchill. Matt and Tom and Mr Churchill ride, and Mr Sam Dixon drives his mother.”

“I should prefer to ride also,” said Rachel with some glint of spirit, but her father told her to put any such notion out of her mind.

“All the way to Abbotsbury? It is five miles at least, very likely six. And the weather most unpromising. And I certainly do not find myself well enough to accompany you; my hip today plagues me abominably —”

It was plain that he was within a hair’s breadth of forbidding the whole outing and Jane, who had a curiosity to see Abbotsbury and the Chesil Bank, said quickly,

“Perhaps Mrs Campbell may herself like to take part in the excursion? I have heard her express an interest in old monastic foundations.”

Mrs Campbell decried any such wish, however. “If Mrs Dixon and Mrs Consett ride with the young people I see no occasion for my presence;” and she returned to her reading.

Jane noticed with interest that Charlotte today wore a new and dashing riding costume, blue velvet, in better taste than her usual dress; also her hair, piled under a feathered shako, was in a style copied from that of Rachel at the Assembly.

“Well, M-Mamma, what d-do you say? Sh-Shall we go?” Rachel asked dispiritedly.

“Oh, by all means, dear child, if you wish it. But do not linger too long. The Grants dine with us, if you recall; it would not do for you to be late for dinner. And you and Jane had better put on warmer gowns; the wind freshens.”

“Oh, do not let them stay to dress up, or I daresay they will be hours prinking and pranking!” struck in Robert. “A warm pelisse or a wrap apiece will be all they need. There will be rugs in the carriages, I daresay.”

In the event, Rachel drove with her cousins, while Jane and Mrs Consett squeezed in with Mrs Dixon and her younger son. The other gentlemen rode on horseback.

Jane was happy to see Sam Dixon looking rather better, and congratulated him on feeling well enough for the outing, after a week spent indoors. She always felt comfortable with Sam Dixon; he had inherited his mother’s easy lack of ceremony and simple unaffected goodness. And the journey was entirely delightful: for a considerable part of it, they were bowling along a ridge road, high above the sea, which gave a magnificent view of Chesil Beach, that remarkable shingle bank, sixteen miles long, extending in an unbroken curve from Abbotsbury to Portland, with a lagoon on its inner side.

“I should not wonder, though, if the weather worsened,” said Mrs Dixon, her tone a little less carefree than it had been at the start of the trip. “See how the waves whiten. We must make sure not to remain too long in Abbotsbury. I do not trust those feathery strips of cloud along there to the west.”

“Mamma is a famous weather-diviner,” Sam said teasingly. “The elders in Baly-Craig always defer to her opinion if there is any dispute. But let us hope that this time her anxieties are unjustified.”

Abbotsbury, with its wide main street, raised footpaths, and thatched cottages, was pronounced completely charming, and a luncheon was bespoken at a modest inn; after this refreshment the party strolled about inspecting the swan-lake, the ancient remains of the Abbey, the immense tithe-barn, and the chapel of St Nicholas. The group had dispersed in twos and threes while exploring; Jane remained with Mrs Dixon and her younger son.

While his mother was inspecting some stained glass in the chapel — “What a contrast, is there not,” Sam said to Jane, “between Rachel and her cousin. They are not at all alike, are they? There is so much sincerity and candour about Rachel — whereas, although Miss Selsea converses with great ease and chatters very amusingly, I do not find her straightforward. There is a lack of true spontaneity.”

“Yes,” agreed Jane slowly, “I know what you mean. I suppose it is the result of upbringing. Rachel has spent her life in all kinds of wild places, while her father was on active service, and so had no chance of mixing with clever society people; she has retained a kind of simplicity which I suppose is rare in adults. Whereas her cousin has from an early age lived in the midst of London society.”

“Very true! And here we see the results.”

Jane liked him the better in that he did not then go on to disparage Charlotte Selsea; instead he praised Rachel, speaking of her in terms of such gentle warmth that Jane, with a queer pang, thought, Sam loves Rachel! He loves her deeply! Oh dear, I wonder if she is aware of this? Poor fellow! He is such a good, kind person!

— Somehow, although she had a great kindness towards Sam, indeed, felt more warmly towards him than almost anybody else she knew, she could not imagine any very prosperous outcome for this love of his. She was certain that Rachel, though fond of him, felt towards him only as a friend.

Yet, she thought, after all, what do I really know about him? Or about Rachel? Why exercise my spirits over two people who should be perfectly capable of conducting their own affairs?

And she paid heed, instead, to Mrs Dixon, who, having inspected the reredos and a plaster tunnel-vault, strolled out of the chapel and said bluntly, “Miss Fairfax, how much longer do these Selseas remain in Weymouth? I own that I cannot take to Miss Selsea. She seems a vain, heartless kind of girl, and a designing coquette. How very different from dear Rachel!”

“I do not believe they will stay here very long,” said Jane. “They will soon have had enough of Weymouth. They are used to a more entertaining society.”

“My son Matt seems hugely taken with her.”

“He finds her talk amusing. She knows so many prominent people in London society.”

“Knows! Hah! She has heard each of them utter one bon mot at a party — or has heard somebody else who has done so! All her gossip comes at second-hand!”

Jane reflected that this was probably true. “Yet she brings it out with such an air of confidence. One cannot but be entertained.”

“I can!” said Mrs Dixon. “Speak for yourself, Miss Fairfax. Though I notice she never addresses herself to you.”

“Oh no, I am far below her notice.”

“Well,” said Mrs Dixon, her pleasant brow creased with unwonted dislike and disapproval, “I wish she may soon find some likelier prey than my son Matt. — Why not Frank Churchill? He will be heir to a considerable fortune, they say.”

“Oh, ma’am, but Mr Churchill is just the sort of gentleman that Miss Selsea has been accustomed to meet — a young London society gentleman, polite, cheerful, agreeable. But Mr Matt Dixon is so much more than that. Miss Selsea has probably never come into contact with such a mind in her life!”

“Miss Fairfax, you are a shrewd one!” cried Mrs Dixon, turning on Jane a look of remarkable friendliness and intelligence. “They do think well of him at Cambridge. So you can understand my concern about him — my estimate of his value.”

“Indeed I do, ma’am. But I am sure that because — because Mr Dixon is so far above the lady in real worth of character and — and intelligence — he will not for long be deluded by her apparent charm.”

At this moment they were disconcerted by the sudden onset of a shower: large cold drops of rain commencing to fall on them with most unwelcome heaviness and frequency.

“Lord bless me, how very unfortunate! Now, what are we to do? Miss Fairfax, you and Sam had best hurry back to the inn; I know that you, too, are subject to bad colds. And to get a wetting is the very worst thing in the world for my poor boy,” cried Mrs Dixon, casting her eyes about for Matt and Miss Selsea, who had last been seen climbing over a stile between two cottages. “Now, where are those others gone? Oh, Mr Churchill —” to Frank, now encountered with an umbrella, gallantly escorting Rachel in the direction of the hostelry — “will you, pray, go in search of my son Matt and Miss Charlotte? We must leave for Weymouth at once, without delay, before the storm worsens; it has come on very much faster than was to have been expected —” casting a harassed and disapproving glance at the heavens, which were indeed very black and threatening.

Frank obligingly gave over his umbrella to Sam.

“I think I know just where the others are to be found: there is a ruin or small chapel on that eminence over there, and they were last seen posting in its direction; Miss Selsea expressed a wish to see it. I will summon them.”

The ladies returned with Sam to the inn, which, fortunately, was only a few steps farther along the street. There they found Mrs Consett, leisurely taking a cup of tea, and commissioned with the message that Mr Gillender and Mr Selsea had ridden off (Robert Selsea appropriating Frank Churchill’s hired horse for the purpose) in order to attend what they had been informed would be a famous cock-fight at the village of Sherton Abbas inland.

“Well! Upon my word!” exclaimed Mrs Dixon with some indignation. “That’s cool! Poor Mr Churchill! How is he supposed to return to Weymouth?”

“Mr Selsea said he might have his turn at driving the ladies.”

The two errant young gentlemen had been gone at least twenty minutes, so there was nothing to be done but wait in the parlour for the rest of the party to make their appearance. Rachel was pale and silent. She sat staring at the rain streaming down the windowpanes. Mrs Dixon became increasingly anxious about her son Sam.

“To be obliged to drive back in this downpour! It is above all things unfortunate! I would suggest that you remain here at the inn overnight, my dear boy, but the bedrooms all seem to be wretchedly damp; you would take just as much harm from the beds here, I daresay, as from the storm.”

“Oh, beyond doubt! Besides the fact that I have not the least wish to remain overnight in this rustic spot!” said Sam with an affectionate smile for his mother’s worries. “In any case, ma’am, you forget that I shall be needed as a driver.”

“But where in the world can those others be?” fretted his mother.

It was yet another twenty minutes before the trio made their appearance; Charlotte, it seemed, continually in quest of “a better prospect” had persuaded Matt farther and farther along the ridge beyond the chapel, and Frank had been obliged to walk nearly a mile before he caught up with them. The young lady, sheltered by the umbrella, was cheerful and reasonably dry, whereas both young gentlemen were tolerably wet, and Matt appeared in decidedly low spirits, though Frank Churchill, talkative and gay as usual, took with equanimity the news that his rented horse had been commandeered and that it would be his task to drive some of the ladies back to Weymouth.

As the storm continued unabated and showed no sign of lessening, it was thought best to set off, Sam driving Charlotte and Rachel in the carriage that was supplied with a hood, and Frank in charge of Jane and the two older ladies, all the females and Sam being protected by such additional wraps and umbrellas as the inn was able to provide.

The journey was a silent one, the lashing downpour rendering it impossible for the travellers to see any of the coastal view which had delighted them on the outward trip; while the spirits of all were quenched by the sharp drop in temperature and lamentable change in the weather; and those of Mrs Dixon, in particular, afflicted by much self-blame in ever having agreed to the outing.