“Nay, when father’s asked him there’s not a word to say,” she cried. “Father! I would as soon have believed that you and me, Phil, would have been asked to take tea with the Queen.”
Brotherton stayed a week at the White House--to the great mortification of the Pilgrims at Wyburgh, whose guest he had been. Nobody likes to have their visitors interfered with, or that a new acquaintance, whom they have themselves introduced and brought out, so to speak, in society, should desert them for a new circle. The girls and the mother were alike indignant, and the incident even had the effect of quickening the action of the father, and making him more impatient of the delays in respect to old Mr. Joscelyn’s estate. But this had little effect upon the household at the White House, which for the moment was more happy and peaceful than perhaps it had ever been before. It was the beginning of one of those new chapters in life which revive the interest of the old story. Poor Mrs. Joscelyn had lived through many such, but they had been in most cases not of the pleasant, but painful kind. Her blood had been quickened in her veins, her heart driven into wild beating, as one crisis after another occurred in the family life. But now everything was changed. Lydia had become to her another self. She was not sure whether it was not herself again, glorified, elevated, made beautiful by present youth and infinite hope, which was always about her--moving with her step for step, talking, even thinking with her: the same thoughts rising to their lips. Between two sisters such a dual life is sweet; but to a mother it is a recompense for all the pangs of life, which are seldom few or small. She was not sure that it was not herself who spoke, and thought, and smiled in Lydia; but only a self far more firm, erect, and self-supporting than she had ever been. Lydia was not afraid of anything, and of Ralph Joscelyn least of all. This of itself made the strangest difference. It gave a flavour and fragrance to their mingled life. The mother felt herself more brave and more strong in her child; and now romance was arriving to her late in the same way. Ralph Joscelyn’s wooing had been a rough one. During its course the pretty, drooping Lydia of those days had been charmed by its very abruptness, and considered the peremptory passion a double compliment to herself, and to the power of love in subduing the strong. She had liked all the silly similes, the lion enchained, the giant deprived of his strength, and had believed in her foolish heart that her half-savage hero would be always in her toils--however rough to others, yet to herself the gentlest of the gentle. From this foolish dream there had been a summary awakening; and all her long life since had been calculated to convince the romantic woman that romance existed only in her dreams. But now another kind of awakening was coming to her. Youth had come back with its visions, and Arcadia, and love. The young man who was her own kith and kin (which of itself was sweet) was also, as becomes a young man, something of her own kind. He was full of poetry, and sympathy, and enthusiasm: it was not after her old-fashioned mode, but yet it was not the common strain of prose to which she had been accustomed. To see his eyes turn to her Lydia was to Mrs. Joscelyn like the revival of all her own maiden fancies; and the affectionate worship which he gave to herself completed the charm. Perhaps she was happier than Lydia in those early days of wooing. She saw the dawn of admiration and enthusiasm in his eyes, when Lydia herself thought of him only as a sort of advanced playfellow, a something new in his youth and pleasantness. Mrs. Joscelyn saw it all from the beginning; she felt from the beginning that it was written in heaven. It was half like a story which she was reading in snatches, or chapters, a single page at a time, always longing to go on with it, to see what the next step was to be, to anticipate the end.