Sophia: A Romance

She looked at the group with a mixture of weariness and impatience. "Is the gentleman not satisfied yet?" she said. "What is all this?"

"I am satisfied, madam," Sir Hervey retorted, "that I did not hear the truth before."

"Well, you are too late now," she answered, "for she's gone. She didn't wish to see you, and there's an end."

"I shall not believe, ma'am-"

"Not believe?" she cried, opening her eyes with sudden fire. "I thought you were a gentleman, sir. I suppose you will take a lady's word?"

"If the lady will tell me for whom the coach at the door is waiting," Sir Hervey answered quietly; and as he spoke he made good his footing by crossing the threshold. He could not see the hot, foolish face that followed him in to the passage, or he might have been enlightened sooner.

"The coach?" she said. "It is for me."

"It is for a bride."

"I am the bride."

"And the bridegroom?"

Her eyes sparkled. "Come!" she cried. "How is that your affair? We poor women have impertinences enough to suffer on these occasions; but it is new to me that the questions of chance visitors are part of them! Room's more than company, sometimes," she added, tossing her head, her accent not quite so genteel as it had been, when she was less moved. "And I'll be glad to see your back."

"I beg your pardon a thousand times, ma'am," Coke replied unmoved. "But I see no impertinence in my question-unless, indeed, you are ashamed of your bridegroom."

"That I'm not!" she cried. "That I'm not! And" – snapping her fingers in his face-"that for you. You are impertinent! Ashamed? No, sir, I am not!"

"And God forbid I should be ashamed of my bride!" cried a husky voice behind Sir Hervey; who turned as if he had been pinched. "No, I'll be silent no longer," Tom continued, his face the colour of a beet, albeit his eyes overflowed with honest devotion. "I've played coward too long!" he went on, stretching out his arms as if he were throwing off a weight. "Let go, man" – this to Grocott, as the latter stealthily plucked his sleeve. "Sir Hervey, I didn't tell you before, but it wasn't because I was ashamed of my bride. Not I!" poor Tom cried bravely. "It was because I-I thought you might do something to thwart me. This lady has done me the honour of entrusting her happiness to me, and before one o'clock we shall be married. Now you know."

"Indeed!" Sir Hervey said. And great as was his amazement, he managed to cloak it after a fashion. In the first burst of Tom's confession he had glanced from him to the lady, and had surprised a black-a very black look. That same look he caught on Grocott's face; and in a wonderfully short space of time he had drawn his conclusions. "Indeed!" he repeated. "And whom have I-perhaps we might step into this room, we shall be more of a family party, eh? – whom have I to felicitate on the possession of Sir Thomas Maitland's heart?"

He bowed so low before madam that she was almost deceived; but not quite. She did not answer.

"Oriana, tell him," Tom cried humbly. He was deceived. His eyes were shining with honest pride.

Coke caught at the name. "Oriana!" he repeated, bowing still lower. "Mistress Oriana-"

"Clark," she said drily. And then, "You are not much wiser now."

"My loss, ma'am," Sir Hervey answered politely. "One of Sir Robert Clark of Snailwell's charming daughters, perhaps? Until now I had only the pleasure of knowing the elder, but-"

"You know no more now," she retorted, with an air of low breeding that must have opened any eyes but a lover's. "I don't know your Sir Robert."

"Indeed!" Sir Hervey said. "One of the Leicestershire Clarks, of Lawnd Abbey, perhaps?"

"No," madam answered sullenly, hating him more and more, yet not daring to show it. How she cursed her booby for his indiscretion!

"Surely not a daughter of my old friend, Dean Clark of Salisbury? You don't say so?"

She bit her lip with mortification. "No," she said, "I don't say so. I ain't that either."

Tom intervened hurriedly. "You are under a misapprehension, Sir Hervey," he said. "Clark was Oriana's-her husband's name. Captain Clark, of Sabine's Foot. He did not treat her well," poor Tom continued, leaning forward, his hands resting on the table-they were all in the room now. "But I hope to make the rest of her life more happy than the early part."

"Oh, I beg pardon," Sir Hervey said, a trifle drily. "A widow! Your humble servant, ma'am, to command. You will excuse me, I am sure. You are waiting for Mrs. Northey, I suppose?" he continued, looking from one to the other in seeming innocence.

Tom's face flamed. It was in vain Grocott from the doorway made signs to him to be silent. "They don't know," he blurted out.

Sir Hervey looked grave. "I am sorry for that," he said. "I am sure this lady would not wish you, Sir Tom, to do anything-anything underhand. You have your guardians' consent, of course?"

"No," Tom said flatly; "and I am not going to ask for it."

Outwardly, Sir Hervey raised his eyebrows in protest; inwardly, he saw that argument would be thrown away, and wondered what on earth he should do. He had no authority over the boy, and it was not likely that Dr. Keith, an irregular parson, would pay heed to him.

Madam Oriana, scared for a moment, discerned that he was at a loss, and smiled in triumph.

"Well, sir, have you anything more to say?" she cried.

"Not to Tom," Sir Hervey answered.

"And to me?"

"Only, ma'am, that a marriage is not valid if a false name be used."

The shot was not fired quite at large, for he had surprised Grocott calling her not Oriana, but Sallie. And, fired at large or not, her face showed that it reached the mark. Whether Captain Clark of Sabine's Foot still lived, or there had never been a Clark; whether she had foreseen the difficulty and made up her mind to run the risk, or had not thought of it at all, her scowling, beautiful face betrayed dismay as well as rage.

"What have you to do with my name?" she hissed.

"Nothing," he said politely. "But my friend here, much. I hope he knows it, and knows it correctly. That is all."

But Tom was at the end of his patience.

"I do," he cried hotly, "I do know it! And I'll trouble you, Sir Hervey, to let it alone. Oriana, don't think that anything he can say can move me. I see, Sir Hervey, that you are no true friend to us. I might have known it," he continued bitterly. "You have lived all your life where-where marriage is a bargain, and women are sold, and-you don't believe in anything else. You can't; you can't believe in anything else. But I am only sorry for you! Only-only you'll please to remember that this lady is as good as my wife, and I expect her to be treated as such. She'll not need a defender as long as I live," poor Tom continued, gallantly, though his voice shook. "Come, Oriana, the coach is waiting. In a few minutes I shall have a better right to protect you; and then let any one say a word!"

"Tom," Sir Hervey said gravely, "don't do this."

Madam marked his altered tone, and laughed derisively. "Now he's in his true colours!" she cried. "What will you do, Sir Thomas? La! they shall never say that I dragged a man to church against his will. I've more pride than that, though I may not be a dean's daughter."

Tom raised her hand and kissed it, his boyish face aglow with love. "Come, dear," he said. "What is his opinion to us? A little room, if you please, Sir Hervey. We are going."

"No," Coke answered. "You are not going! I'll not have this on my head. Hear sense, boy. If this lady be one whom you may honestly make your wife, you cannot lose, and she must gain, by waiting to be married in a proper fashion."

"And at a nice expense, too!" she cried, with a sneer.

"She is right," Tom said manfully. "I'm not going to waste my life waiting on the pleasure of a set of old fogies. Make way, Sir Hervey."

"I shall not," Coke returned, maintaining his position between the two and the door. "And if you come near me, boy-"

"Don't push me too far," Tom cried. From no one else in the world would he have endured so much. "Sir Hervey, make way!"

"If he does not, we will have him put out!" madam cried, pale with rage. "This is my room, sir! and I order you to leave it. If you are a gentleman you will go."