It may be said at once that Mrs Finn knew something of Lady Mary which was not known to her father, and which she was not yet prepared to make known to him. The last winter abroad had been passed at Rome, and there Lady Mary Palliser had become acquainted with a certain Mr Tregear,--Francis Oliver Tregear. The Duchess, who had been in constant correspondence with her friend, had asked questions by letter as to Mr Tregear, of whom she had only known that he was the younger son of a Cornish gentleman, who had become Lord Silverbridge's friend at Oxford. In this there had certainly been but little to recommend him to the intimacy of such a girl as Lady Mary Palliser. Nor had the Duchess, when writing, ever spoken of him as a probable suitor for her daughter's hand. She had never connected the two names together. But Mrs Finn had been clever enough to perceive that the Duchess had become fond of Mr Tregear, and would willingly have heard something to his advantage. And she did hear something to his advantage,--something also to his disadvantage. At his mother's death, this young man would inherit a property amounting to about fifteen hundred a year. 'And I am told,' said Mrs Finn, 'that he is quite likely to spend his money before it comes to him.' There had been nothing more written specially about Mr Tregear, but Mrs Finn had feared not only that the young man loved the girl, but that the young man's love had in some imprudent way been fostered by the mother.
Then there had been some fitful confidence during those few days of acute illness. Why should not the girl have the man if he were lovable? And the Duchess referred to her own early days when she had loved, and to the great ruin that had come upon her heart when she had been severed from the man she loved. 'Not but that it has been all for the best,' she had said. 'Not but that Plantagenet has been to me all that a husband should be. Only if she can be spared what I suffered, let her be spared.' Even when these things had been said to her, Mrs Finn had found herself unable to ask questions. She could not bring herself to inquire whether the girl had in truth given her heart to his young Tregear. The one was nineteen and the other as yet but two-and-twenty! But though she asked no questions, she almost knew that it must be so. And she knew also that the father was, as yet, quite in the dark on the matter. How was it possible that in such circumstances she should assume the part of the girl's confidential friend and monitress?
Were she to do so she must immediately tell the father everything.
In such a position no one could be a better friend than Lady Cantrip, and Mrs Finn had already almost made up her mind that, should Lady Cantrip occupy the place, she would tell her ladyship all that had passed between herself and the Duchess on the subject.
Of what hopes she might have, or what fears, about her girl, the Duchess had said no word to her husband. But when she had believed that the things of the world were fading away from her, and when he was sitting by her bedside,--dumb, because at such a moment he knew not how to express the tenderness of his heart,--holding her hand, and trying so to listen to her words, that he might collect and remember every wish, she had murmured something about the ultimate division of the great wealth with which she herself had been endowed. She had never, she said, even tried to remember what arrangements had been made by lawyers, but she hoped that Mary might be so circumstanced, that if her happiness depended on marrying a poor man, want of money need not prevent it. The Duke suspecting nothing, believing this to be a not unnatural question expression of maternal interest, had assured her that Mary's fortune would be ample.
Mrs Finn made the proposition to Lady Mary in respect to Lady Cantrip's invitation. Lady Mary was very like her mother, especially in having exactly her mother's tone of voice, her quick manner of speech, and her sharp intelligence. She had also her mother's eyes, large and round, and almost blue, full of life and full of courage, eyes which never seemed to quail, and her mother's dark brown hair, never long but very copious in its thickness. She was, however, taller than her mother, and very much more graceful in her movement. And she could already assume a personal dignity of manner which had never been within her mother's reach. She had become aware of a certain brusqueness of speech in her mother, a certain aptitude to say sharp things without thinking whether the sharpness was becoming to the position which she held, and taking advantage of the example, the girl had already learned that she might gain more than she would lose by controlling her words.
'Papa wants me to go to Lady Cantrip,' she said.
'I think he would like it,--just for the present, Lady Mary.'
Though there had been the closest possible intimacy between the Duchess and Mrs Finn, this had hardly been so as to the intercourse between Mrs Finn and the children. Of Mrs Finn it must be acknowledged that she was, perhaps fastidiously, afraid of appearing to take advantage of her friendship with the Duke's family. She would tell herself that though circumstances had compelled her to be the closest and nearest friend of a Duchess, still her natural place was not among dukes and their children, and therefore in her intercourse with the girl she did not at first assume the manner and bearing which her position in the house would seem to warrant. Hence the 'Lady Mary'.
'Why does he want to send me away, Mrs Finn?'
'It is not true that he wants to send you away, but that he thinks it will be better for you to be with some friend. Here you must be so much alone.'
'Why don't you stay? But I suppose Mr Finn wants you to be back in London.'
'It is not that only, or, to speak the truth, not that at all. Mr Finn could come here if that were suitable. Or for a week or two he might do very well without me. But there are other reasons.
There is no one whom your mother respected more than Lady Cantrip.'