CHAPTER XV.

BEATRIX ARRIVES AT INGLESIDE.

THE next few weeks passed happily enough.

Dym no longer complained of the dullness of Ingleside ; the squire's gun might be heard from morning till evening in the high lands behind the Great House, and the voices of the beaters as they struggled through the covers below. Kelpie accompanied his master. Humphrey lingered in vain beside the trysting-stile. Dym had not ceased her visits to Woodside, but she preferred taking the lower road. Very often a tall figure that she knew was not Mr. Nethecote's came bursting through the dead bracken and vaulted lightly over the five-barred gate. How Dym's foolish little heart would beat as the slouching felt hat and brown beard came in sight! What a king he looked striding through the dim aisles of the wood! Guy had the trick of holding himself grandly: some men, ennobled by nature, carry their heads as though they wore a crown. Guy Chichester was one of these. "Where are you going?—you look like a gray little sister of charity in that cloak," he would call out. Dym had a better companion than Humphrey for her homeward walk then.

The squire had resumed his old sociable habits, and every man, woman, and child about the place basked gladly in his sunny moods again. Mrs. Chichester had recovered her cheerfulness; the evening hours flew by. Dym seldom read now. When the lamps were lighted, Guy would come in and harangue them from a rug for hours, or, at his mother's request, place himself at the grand piano, and, after preluding idly with one hand, burst forth with his glorious voice in chant or song. Dym learned to accompany him, and after her first trial he made her sing with him, or practice the glees and choruses he was preparing for a grand musical entertainment to be given in his cousin's honor.

For, as Dym phrased it in her letter to Will, "the Great House was to be delivered into the hands of the Philistines.”

Beatrix was coming to Ingleside.

Poor Dym, her heart sank as the squire talked over arrangements with his mother. Mrs. Delaire had fixed the latter part of January for her promised visit. She and her husband had just returned from Nice, and Beatrix had determined that her first London season as a married woman should be inaugurated by a series of visits, commencing with Ingleside. Mrs. Tressilian and Edith were to join the party. Charlie Tressilian could not get leave of absence, but Guy had asked some friends of his mother's: Colonel and Mrs. Lintot, with their son, just called to the bar, and in ill health from over-study; and a ward of Colonel Lintot's-a Miss Beauchamp, popularly reported to be an heiress.

Ingleside would be occupied from garret to basement. While Mrs. Chichester gave orders about the White Room, the Damask Room, the Red Room, and the Oriel Chamber, or consulted with her housekeeper as to the proper lodgment of Mrs. Delaire's, Mrs. Tressilian's, and Miss Beauchamp's maids, Guy summoned his head keeper and counted probable head of game, and sent invitations out to the neighboring gentry for shooting-parties, breakfasts and luncheons ad libitum. There was to be a state dinner party, which would include the grandees of Birstwith and Ripley, and a musical entertainment which should be more general. By degrees this swelled into a dancing-party, then into a ball. Dym wrote out the invitations, and then went with Mrs. Chichester to order a fitting dress for the occasion.

Mrs. Chichester had not forgotten her young dependant's comfort; a small room on the second story was fitted up for her and Edith; Mrs. Chichester had got rid of the obnoxious Mrs. Vivian by promising that Miss Elliott should resume her former charge for the time. Dym looked grateful when she heard of this arrangement. She felt she would be lost among the gay crowd below, she argued a little pitifully when the squire gave his orders that she was to accompany Edith every evening to the drawing-room: "no one will care to see me, and I shall only feel shy and uncomfortable," she pleaded, with a shrinking memory of Beatrix and her cold gray eyes. The near approach of her enemy saddened and oppressed her: "all my goodness will go when I hear her voice," thought the poor child to herself.

But the squire only laughed away her objections; while Mrs. Chichester, under the vague idea that her scruples arose in some degree from her wardrobe, procured her a pretty evening silk in addition to her white muslin. "She will not feel so unlike any one else; and there is the dinner-party and the evening at the vicarage," she said, as though in apology for her extravagance. Dym gave an exclamation of delight when she saw Mrs. Chichester's choice, the very maize that the Harrogate shopman had selected as Dym's color. "You are spoiling me dreadfully," she cried, kissing her hand with a pretty mixture of affection and gratitude. She laid away the shimmering fold of silk with a curious wonder of what Will would think of her in such a dress, and then with renewed courage peeped at the several rooms as she passed.

It was early afternoon, but bright fires already burned in expectation of the various arrivals. Dym lingered longest in the dressing-room attached to the Oriel Chamber, where Edith was to sleep, but she passed the Damask Room with a sort of shudder. "I wonder why some people are a kind of moral east wind to one?" she said to herself, with a little shiver.

Guy Chichester, in his black velvet coat, passed her in the lobby with a nod and smile. "There is the wagonette coming back from the station: the gentlemen are walking up, I hear. Just tell my mother our guests have arrived; she is in her room, I believe."

Dym peeped through the oaken balustrade, much as she had done at Lansdowne House: she could just catch a glimpse of Mrs. Tressilian's velvet and sables, and a hat with a long ostrich plume, that could belong to no other than Beatrix. "Mother, you must come and welcome the bride," called out the squire, in cheery tones. "What have you done with Frank, Trichy?"

"He is walking up with the others," returned young Mrs. Delaire, composedly: "it was all Colonel Lintot's fault; he would have it that there was no room in the wagonette. Do you know, Guy, Ingleside looks smaller to me than it used in the old days? I could not understand Adelaide's fever of admiration as we drove up.'"

"Mrs. Delaire has such grand notions," returned a pleasant laughing voice, evidently Miss Beauchamp's.

"She has come home fresh from Italian palaces," replied

her cousin, good-naturedly. "Well, what did you think of Rome, Trichy ?".

Overrated, as usual. Frank was enthusiastic enough for both-he hired a carriage and cicerone for three days. I never was more tired in my life. I was thankful when we got to Nice. What do you say, child?" freeing her mantle impatiently from Edith's grasp: "where is Miss Elliott? How should I know?" with the haughty turn of the head Dym remembered so well.

They were still standing in the little corridor; the others had passed on into the dining-room. Mr. Chichester stooped and whispered a word into the child's ear, and she flew upstairs so quickly that Miss Elliott had scarcely time to rise from her stooping posture before she found herself clasped in her little pupil's arms.

Edith's ecstacies lasted till tea-time. She was overjoyed at seeing her governess again, and delighted with everything with her little bed, with the rose-colored curtains, and especially with the tiny snuggery that Mrs. Chichester had fitted up so prettily. Before Dym knew what she was about, she had dragged up her brother-in-law to look at it.

Colonel Delaire was very good-natured. He looked at everything Edith pointed out, and admired the view extremely. He was evidently surprised to recognize an old acquaintance in Miss Elliott, though he was far too well bred to show it. At the child's request, he partook of a cup of tea; though he put it down rather hastily when he heard Beatrix's voice in the corridor below.

"I asked Trichy to come up, but she said she was too tired. She has been round to the stables, though, with Cousin Guy," blurted out Edith, in her usual thoughtless fashion.

Dym was sorry for the child's frankness when she saw Colonel Delaire bite his lip with an annoyed air. Edith crept on to her governess's lap when he had gone, and shook her fair hair affectionately over her shoulder.

"Trichy was so cross when I asked her, and that made Frank come up instead. Don't you like Frank? he is always telling Trichy that she ought to be kinder to me. They had a quarrel once when Trichy behaved badly to mamma.” Dym tried to hush the child's confidence, but she could not help thinking over her words. There was a careworn look on

Colonel Delaire's handsome face as though matrimony had not perfectly agreed with him, and a restless, anxious expression in his blue eyes, when they rested on his beautiful wife, that told volumes.

Dym was in nervous trepidation at the thought of the evening; she deferred her entrance into the drawing-room so long that the ladies had already left the dining-room and were gathered round the fire. Dym was stealing away into a corner by herself, but Mrs. Chichester took her hand kindly and drew her into the circle. Mrs. Lintot and Miss Beauchamp both addressed her pleasantly; but Beatrix, who was standing somewhat apart from the others, only raised her eyes for a second and bowed coldly.

In spite of her dislike, Dym could not refuse a tribute to her loveliness. Mrs. Delaire looked even more beautiful than Beatrix Tressilian had done. She was a little paler, and to a close observer there was still the same dissatisfied expression and a quick lowering of the white brows when anything displeased her; but her beauty was magnificent; and, though it needed nothing to set it off, she wore her white dress without jewel or ornament of any kind save the rich lace that adorned it.

She drew aside with a scornful air when Mrs. Tressilian beckoned Dym to a seat beside her. Dym, who was strangely ill at ease in her presence, was glad when the gentlemen came in, and she was at liberty to move to a distant table, where she turned over engravings with Edith or watched the various groups.

Colonel Lintot had a red face and a white moustache, and was a far more soldierly-looking man than Colonel Delaire. His wife was a brisk, cheerful little woman, prematurely faded by Indian suns, and looking far older than her husband. Their son was very unlike either: he was a tall, gentlemanly man, but an habitual stoop and a habit of wearing an eyeglass spoiled him.

Miss Beauchamp, who accompanied them, was very young, and not at all good-looking; but her sweet retiring manners charmed Dym from the first. In spite of her wealth and the grand estate in Wales that the Lintots were always talking about, she was very unaffected and natural, dressed simply, and seemed to study others' wishes before her own.

In Beatrix's presence she drooped a little. A sort of sub