Meanwhile the love-affairs between the middle-aged couple were prospering well, after a fashion; after the fashion that they liked best, although it might probably have appeared dull and prosaic to younger people.Lord Cumnor had come down in great glee at the news he had heard from his wife at the Towers.He, too, seemed to think he had taken an active part in bringing about the match by only speaking about it.His first words on the subject to Lady Cumnor were, - 'I told you so.Now didn't I say what a good, suitable thing this affair between Gibson and Clare would be! I don't know when I have been so much pleased.You may despise the trade of match-maker, my lady, but I am very proud of it.After this, I shall go on looking out for suitable cases among the middle-aged people of my acquaintance.I shan't meddle with young folks, they are so apt to be fanciful; but I have been so successful in this, that I do think it is a good encouragement to go on.' 'Go on - with what?' asked Lady Cumnor, drily.'Oh, planning - You can't deny that I planned this match.' 'I don't think you are likely to do either much good or harm by planning,'
she replied, with cool, good sense.'It puts it into people's heads, my dear.' 'Yes, if you speak about your plans to them, of course it does.But in this case you never spoke to either Mr Gibson, or Clare, did you?' All at once the recollection of how Clare had come upon the passage in Lord Cumnor's letter flashed on his lady, but she did not say anything about it, but left her husband to flounder about as best he might.'No! I never spoke to them; of course not.' 'Then you must be strongly mesmeric, and your will acted upon theirs, if you are to take credit for any part in the affair,' continued his pitiless wife.'I really can't say.It's no use looking back to what I said or did.I'm very well satisfied with it, and that's enough, and I mean to show them how much I'm pleased.I shall give Clare something towards her rigging out, and they shall have a breakfast at Ashcombe Manor-house.I'll write to Preston about it.When did you say they were to be married?' 'I think they'd better wait till Christmas, and I have told them so.It would amuse the children, going over to Ashcombe for the wedding; and if it's bad weather during the holidays I'm always afraid of their finding it dull at the Towers.It's very different if it's a good frost, and they can go out skating and sledging in the park.But these last two years it has been so wet for them, poor dears!' 'And will the other poor dears be content to wait to make a holiday for your grandchildren? "To make a Roman holiday." Pope, or somebody else, had a line of poetry like that."To make a Roman holiday,"' - he repeated, pleased with his unusual aptitude at quotation.'It's Byron, and it's nothing to do with the subject in hand.I'm surprised at your lordship's quoting Byron, - he was a very immoral poet.' 'I saw him take his oaths in the House of Lords,' said Lord Cumnor, apologetically.'Well! the less said about him the better,' said Lady Cumnor.'I have told Clare that she had better not think of being married before Christmas;and it won't do for her to give up her school in a hurry either.' But Clare did not intend to wait till Christmas; and for this once she carried her point against the will of the countess, and without many words, or any open opposition.She had a harder task in setting aside Mr Gibson's desire to have Cynthia over for the wedding, even if she went back to her school at Boulogne directly after the ceremony.At first she had said that it would be delightful, a charming plan; only she feared that she must give up her own wishes to have her child near her at such a time, on account of the expense of the double journey.But Mr Gibson, economical as he was in his habitual expenditure, had a really generous heart.He had already shown it, in entirely relinquishing his future wife's life-interest in the very small property the late Mr Kirkpatrick had left, in favour of Cynthia; while he arranged that she should come to his home as a daughter as soon as she left the school she was at.The life-interest was about thirty pounds a year.Now he gave Mrs Kirkpatrick three five-pound notes, saying that he hoped they would do away with the objections to Cynthia's coming over to the wedding; and at the time Mrs Kirkpatrick felt as if they would, and caught the reflection of his strong wish, and fancied it was her own.If the letter could have been written and the money sent off that day while the reflected glow of affection lasted, Cynthia would have been bridesmaid to her mother.But a hundred little interruptions came in the way of letter-writing; and by the next day maternal love had diminished; and the value affixed to the money had increased: money had been so much needed, so hardly earned in Mrs Kirkpatrick's life; while the perhaps necessary separation of mother and child had lessened the amount of affection the former had to bestow.
So she persuaded herself, afresh, that it would be unwise to disturb Cynthia at her studies; to interrupt the fulfilment of her duties just after the semestre had begun afresh; and she wrote a letter to Madame Lefevre so well imbued with this persuasion, that an answer which was almost an echo of her words was returned, the sense of which being conveyed to Mr Gibson, who was no great French scholar, settled the vexed question, to his moderate but unfeigned regret.But the fifteen pounds were not returned.