Ada Cambridge: A Mere Chance: A Novel. Vol. 1

At Alston and Brown's Mrs. Hardy stepped out of her carriage for perhaps the fifth time. She was a very large, masculine kind of woman, with a remarkably fine Roman nose, of which she was excessively proud, and justly, for it had been a valuable weapon to her in the battle of life, literally carrying all before it. When he had got over the effect of her nose, the beholder of Mrs. Hardy's person, as a rule, was pleasantly impressed by it. It had a generous and a regal air.

"My dear," she said to her young companion, "I only want to match some lace. Will you go in with me, or will you stay where you are?"

"I think I will stay, if you please, aunt," replied Rachel. "The carriage is so comfortable, and I like to look at the street."

"Don't look too much," said Mrs. Hardy, smiling anxiously. "There are all kinds of office clerks and people mixed up with the crowd at this hour."

"I don't want to look at men ," said Miss Fetherstonhaugh, with more dignity than one would have given her credit for. "It is the ladies' dresses I like to see – and the horses."

Mrs. Hardy marched into the shop with that imposing mien which became more and more pronounced as she grew older and stouter, and her social successes accumulated; and her niece sat still in her corner, and looked for a long while at the sealskin jacket.

"All my cousins have sealskin jackets," she mused, "but I don't think they had them until they were married. Perhaps I shall have one when I am married. I can't expect my aunt to buy me one, of course; she has bought me so many pretty things. How lovely and soft that brown fur is! How well it would suit my complexion! If my husband is rich, and asks me what I should like for my first birthday present, I shall not have any difficulty in making up my mind. I wonder will he be rich? like Mr. Thornley, and Mr. Buxton, and Mr. Reade. At any rate, he must not be poor; if he is, I won't have him. I know enough of poverty" – with a little shudder and a sudden solemnity in her face – "and I don't mean to run into it again if I can help it."

Here she fell into a rather mournful reverie, thinking of her old life, with its shifts and privations – of her poor father, who had been so happy through it all, never feeling the weight of the petty debts and dishonours that lay like lead on her – of her struggles to keep his affairs straight – of her prayers that she might not live to despise and desert him, which was a temptation that grew with her growing years – and as she thought, she gazed absently, tenderly, pensively, not on the sealskin jacket, but on the faces of the passers-by. She had no idea how excessively interesting and pretty she looked to those passers-by with that expression in her eyes.

However, a gentleman came by presently, a well-preserved young man of fifty or sixty, with a waxed moustache, and a slender umbrella carried musketwise over his shoulder; and his attention was violently arrested.

"Where have I seen that charming creature?" he asked himself, imploring his memory, which had a great store of miscellaneous treasures, to be quick and help him. "Surely I have been introduced to her somewhere. Oh, of course! it is old Hardy's niece, or ward, or whatever she is. Good day, Miss Fetherstonhaugh," turning back when he had nearly passed her, and making a profound obeisance with his hat off. "Fine afternoon for a drive."

She recognised him immediately. She had danced a quadrille with him at her memorable first evening "out," and she had learned a great deal of him since from the gossip of her aunt's circle. There was a time, she had been told, when he was nearly becoming a member of the family himself. He was a great merchant – or an ex-merchant rather – who had dealt in some mysterious commodity that had brought enormous profits; and he had risen by all kinds of good luck, from no one knew what depth of social insignificance to the proud position of a man of fashion about town, whom ladies delighted to honour.

"Good day, Mr. Kingston," she responded, looking very pink and bright, and a little flurried as she returned his salutation. She had the daintiest complexion that ever adorned a youthful face, and whenever she was startled or embarrassed, however slightly, she blushed like a rose. Mr. Kingston, accustomed to appraise the charms of his female friends with an almost brutal impartiality, was unjustifiably touched and flattered by this innocent demonstration. He was really very glad he had remembered who she was before he had lost so good an opportunity for looking at and talking to her.

"I don't think it is a very fine afternoon," she remarked presently, as the gentleman seemed to find himself for once a little at a loss for a subject; and she smiled at him through her blushes, which went and came suddenly and delicately, as if they were breathed over her by the air somehow. "It has been looking grey, like rain, ever since we started; and it is rather cold, don't you think?"

"Is it? Ah! so it is. But we must expect cold weather in May. I suppose it is rather strange to you to be finding winter coming on at this season?"

"No. Why should it be strange to me?"

"I thought – I am sure somebody told me – that you were recently out from England."

"Oh, dear, no," she replied, frankly. "I was born in this colony, and have lived in it all my life."

"In the name of fortune, where?"

"In different places; at Sandhurst, at Ballarat, and on the Upper Murray, and in little townships here and there in the bush; and sometimes in Melbourne."

"I am sure I never saw you in Melbourne until I met you at that dance the other night," he protested earnestly. "I never should have forgotten your face if I had once seen it."

"I daresay not," she said, and she was angry to find herself blushing again. "I was but a child when I lived in Melbourne before, and – and my home was not in Toorak then."

Mr. Kingston understood. She had been a poor relation in those days, and the Misses Hardy were unmarried. He had a constitutional antipathy to poor relations, and he was a little disappointed. For a few seconds he kept silence, while he wondered what her antecedents could have been. Then he looked at her again, and she was regarding him with a curious gravity of demeanour, almost as if she had divined his thoughts. There was a meek majesty about her that commanded his respect, and that he considered was excessively becoming.

After all, what did it matter about her antecedents? Did she not look a thoroughly well-bred little woman, sitting there in her furs and soft cushions, with her head held so straight? Did he not hear other men – better men than he from a genealogical point of view – singing her praises wherever he went? Whatever she had been, she was a distinguished personage now, whose acquaintance it behoved a veteran lady-killer to cultivate, and that without delay.

"I am very glad your home is in Toorak now," he said gallantly. "I have some land there myself, quite close to your uncle's place."

"Indeed," murmured Rachel.

"Yes, and I am going to build on it soon. I have just got the plans out from home – capital plans. I shall bring them in for Mrs. Hardy's opinion. When my house is built we shall be neighbours. You will have to help me, you and your aunt, with the furnishing and all that sort of thing that ladies understand."

"I don't think I understand much about it," she said; "but I shall like to see it done. I am very fond of pretty furniture. Will your house be very big?"

"Oh, nothing out of the way. I'm not going to spend more than twenty thousand pounds on it. My friends tell me I ought to do the thing properly when I am about it; but I don't see the fun of locking up a lot of money in bricks and mortar. I might want to change my residence any day, you see."