It was thus that the young tutor sat in his bare little room out of the way, and, with eyes that glowed over his midnight candle, looked into the future, and calculated visionary dates at which, if all went with him as he hoped, he might lay his trophies at his lady’s feet. It is true that Matty herself fully intended by that time to have daughters ready to enter upon the round of conquest from which she should have retired into matron dignity; but no such profanity ever occurred to Colin. Thus the two thought of each other as they went to their rest--the one with all the delusions of heroic youthful love, the other with no delusions at all, but a half gratitude, half affection--a woman’s compassionate fondness for the man who had touched her heart a little by giving her his, but whom it was out of the question ever to think of loving. And so the coils of Fate began to throw themselves around the free-born feet of young Colin of Ramore.
Lady Hallamshire was a woman very accessible to a little judicious flattery, and very sensible of good living. She liked Mr. Jordan’s liberal house, and she liked the court that was paid to her; and was not averse to lengthening out her visit, and converting three days into a fortnight, especially as her ladyship’s youngest son, Horace Fitz-Gibbon, who was a lieutenant in the navy, was expected daily in the Clyde--at least his ship was, which comes to the same thing. Horace was a dashing young fellow enough, with nothing but his handsome face (he had his mother’s nose, as everybody acknowledged, and, although now a dowager, she had been a great beauty in her day), and the honourable prefix to his name to help him on in the world. Lady Hallamshire had heard of an heiress or two about, and her maternal ambition was stimulated; and, at the same time, the grouse were bewitching, and the cookery most creditable. The only thing she was sorry for was Matty Frankland, her ladyship said, who never could stay more than a week anywhere, unless she was flirting with somebody, without being bored. Perhaps the necessary conditions had been obtained even at Ardmartin, for Matty bore up very well on the whole. She fulfilled the threat of making use of the tutor to the fullest extent; and Colin gave himself up to the enjoyment of his fool’s paradise without a thought of flying from the dangerous felicity. They climbed the hills together, keeping far in advance of their companions, who overtook them only to find the mood change, and to leave behind in the descent the pair of loiterers, whose pace no calls nor advices, nor even the frequent shower, could quicken; and they rowed together over the lovely loch, about which Matty, having much fluency of language, and the adroitness of a little woman of the world in appropriating other people’s sentiments, showed even more enthusiasm than Colin. Perhaps she too enjoyed this wonderful holiday in the life which already she knew by heart, and found no novelty in. To be adored, to be invested with all the celestial attributes, to feel herself the one grand object in somebody’s world, is pleasant to a woman. Matty almost felt as if she was in love, without the responsibility of the thing, or any need for troubling herself about what it was going to come to. It could come to nothing--except an expression of gratitude and kindness to the young man who had saved her cousin’s life. When everything was so perfectly safe, there could be no harm in the enjoyment; and the conclusion Matty came to, as an experimental philosopher, was, that to fall in love really, and to accept its responsibilities, would be an exciting but highly troublesome amusement. She could not help thinking to herself how anxious she should be about Colin if such a thing were possible. How those mistakes which he could not help making, and which at present did not disturb her in the least, would make her glow and burn with shame, if he were really anything to her. And yet he was a great deal to her. She was as good as if she had been really possessed by that love on which she speculated, and almost as happy; and Colin was in her mind most of the hours of the day, when she was awake, and a few of those in which she slept. The difference was, that Matty contemplated quite calmly the inevitable fact of leaving Ardmartin on Monday, and did not think it in the least likely that she would break her heart over the parting; and that, even in imagination, she never for a moment connected her fate with that of her young adorer.