These different resemblances and reflections were separately passing through the minds of the two ladies when their conference was over.
Madame Vine at length rose from her chair to depart.
"Would you mind holding my baby for one minute?" cried Barbara.
Madame Vine quite started.
"The baby there!" she uttered.
Barbara laughed.
"It is lying by my side, under the shawl, quiet little sleeping thing."
Madame Vine advanced and took the sleeping baby. How could she refuse?
She had never had it in her arms before; she had, in fact, scarcely seen it. One visit of ceremony she had paid Mrs. Carlyle, as in politeness bound, a day or two after the young lady's arrival, and had been shown a little face, nearly covered with lace, in a cradle.
"Thank you. I can get up now. I might have half smothered it, had I attempted before," continued Barbara, still laughing. "I have been here long enough, and am quite rested. Talking about smothering children, what accounts have we in the registrar-general's weekly returns of health! So many children 'overlaid in bed,' so many children 'suffocated in bed.' One week there were nearly twenty; and often there are as many as eight or ten. Mr. Carlyle says he knows they are smothered on purpose."
"Oh, Mrs. Carlyle!"
"I exclaimed, just as you do, when he said it, and laid my hand over his lips. He laughed, and told me I did not know half the wickedness of the world. Thank you," again repeated Mrs. Carlyle, taking her child from Lady Isabel. "Is she not a pretty baby? Do you like the name--Anne?"
"It is a ****** name," replied Lady Isabel; "and ****** names are always the most attractive."
"That is just what Archibald thinks. But he wanted this child's to be Barbara. I would not have had it Barbara for the world. I remember his once saying, a long, long while ago that he did not like elaborate names; they were mouthfuls; and he instanced mine and his sister's, and his own. I recalled his words to him, and he said he may not have liked the name of Barbara then, but he loved it now. So we entered into a compromise; Miss Baby was named Anne Barbara, with an understanding that the first name is to be for use, and the last for the registers."
"It is not christened?" said Lady Isabel.
"Only baptized. We should have had it christened before now, but for William's death. Not that we give christening dinners; but I waited for the trial at Lynneborough to be over, that my dear brother Richard might stand to the child."
"Mr. Carlyle does not like christenings made into festivals," Lady Isabel dreamily observed, her thoughts buried in the past.
"How do you know that?" exclaimed Barbara, opening her eyes.
And poor Madame Vine, her pale face flushing, had to stammer forth some confused words that she had "heard so somewhere."
"It is quite true," said Barbara. "He has never given a christening-dinner for any of his children, and gets out of attending if invited to one. He cannot understand the analogy between a solemn religious rite and the meeting together afterward to eat and drink and make merry, according to the fashion of this world."
As Lady Isabel quitted the room, young Vane was careering through the corridor, throwing his head in all directions, and calling out,--"Lucy! I want Lucy!"
"What do you want with her?" asked Madame Vine.
"/Il m'est impossible de vous le dire madame/," responded he. Being, for an Eton boy, wonderfully up in French, he was rather given to show it off when he got the chance. He did not owe thanks for it to Eton.
Lady Mount Severn had taken better care than that. Better care? What /could/ she want? There was one whole, real, live French tutor--and he an Englishman!--for the eight hundred boys. Very unreasonable of her ladyship to disparage that ample provision.
"Lucy cannot come to you just now. She is practicing."
"/Mais, il le faut. J'ai le droit de demander apres elle. Elle m'appartient, vous comprenez, madame, cette demoiselle la./"
Madame could not forbear a smile. "I wish you would speak English sense, instead of French nonsense."
"Then the English sense is that I want Lucy and I must have her. I am going to take her for a drive in the pony carriage, if you must know.
She said she'd come, and John's getting it ready."
"I could not possibly allow it," said Madame Vine. "You'd be sure to upset her."
"The idea!" he returned, indignantly. "As if I should upset Lucy! Why, I'm one of the great whips at Eton. I care for Lucy too much not to drive steadily. She is to be my wife, you know, /ma bonne dame/."
At this juncture two heads were pushed out from the library, close by; those of the earl and Mr. Carlyle. Barbara, also, attracted by the talking, appeared at the door of her dressing-room.
"What's that about a wife?" asked my lord of his son.
The blood mantled in the young gentleman's cheek as he turned round and saw who had spoken, but he possessed all the fearlessness of an Eton boy.
"I intend Lucy Carlyle to be my wife, papa. I mean in earnest--when we shall both be grown up--if you will approve, and Mr. Carlyle will give her to me."
The earl looked somewhat impassable, Mr. Carlyle amused. "Suppose," said the latter, "we adjourn the discussion to this day ten years?"
"But that Lucy is so very young a child, I should reprove you seriously, sir," said the earl. "You have no right to bring Lucy's name into any such absurdity."
"I mean it, papa; you'll all see. And I intend to keep out of scrapes --that is, of nasty, dishonorable scrapes--on purpose that Mr. Carlyle shall find no excuse against me. I have made up my mind to be what he is--a man of honor. I am right glad you know about it, sir, and I shall let mamma know it before long."
The last sentence tickled the earl's fancy, and a grim smile passed over his lips. "It will be war to the knife, if you do."
"I know that," laughed the viscount. "But I am getting a better match for mamma in our battles than I used to be."
