Lady Margaret had recovered her good-humour by this time, and saw he was trying her; so she added waggishly, “I must tell you, Lord De Vaux, that I have the greatest respect for an honest old woman who commits the enormity of taking snuff, as papa remembers your great-grandmother and mine doing freely, and that Berry’s model boy has red hair and a face covered with freckles.”
“What will you do without Berry?” he questioned her insidiously.
“I don’t know,” she answered, her face falling, and herself dropping forthwith into the new trap laid for her. “We’ll miss him dreadfully, and we are only to go to town after Easter for a few weeks, just that I may be presented, as mamma does not think that I am strong enough to stand the season. Berry will have nobody from home with him for the rest of the time, except Reiver, to make him feel less lonely, poor dear fellow.”
“You might take Carlo and me in exchange for Reiver and Berry. I think you could make something of us—get us to run unprofessionally, and do a little work in time.”
She looked up quickly to see how much he was in jest, and how much in earnest. She looked down again, and said hastily, “Carlo and you do not need me or any one to make you run and work, when it is in you both to run faster and work better than the rest of the world, if you choose.”
She did not intend to flatter him by any means, but he was not displeased with her answer—not though she put aside his petition.
The conviction had been growing upon De Vaux, till it was like an inspiration, that Lady Margaret and her brother held the right standard which he had missed—the one bracing and ennobling view of life—in which a man can live and die, serve God and man, and cast behind him self with all its weakness and waywardness.
He could do it as he was a Christian man, Heaven helping him. He had known what she had meant by a crusade all around us, for every man and woman, always. He had remembered who had first bidden man take up the cross, and condemned the servant who had hidden his talent in the earth. It made De Vaux thoughtful and sorrowful; but in spite of his sorrow, and the humility which was at its root, he was more hopeful than he had been since boyhood in taking these reflections to heart, and in seeing in the light of Lady Margaret’s conception of duty what an egotist he had been, and how near he had got to making shipwreck of his life, by yielding to scruples and whims, and forgetting the great call which is on him and every man.