CHAPTER XVII.

THE TRECARRELS.

Duly next day, at a proper visiting-hour, the handsome and well-appointed carriage of General Trecarrel, occupied only by his two daughters and Audley Trevelyan, was seen bowling down the avenue of the villa at Porthellick, with Rajah bounding before it in as much glee as if at home in Thibet, "the northern land of snow," where many a time he had scoured along the slopes of the Himalaya range and the Dwalaghiri in pursuit of the Cashmere goat and the Tartarian yak; but, as the event proved, the visit was in vain: the two ladies could only leave their cards, as they were informed that both Mrs. and Miss Devereaux were too much indisposed after the events of yesterday to receive visitors.

"It will be a case which warm drinks and cosseting will soon cure, I hope," said Rose, shrugging her pretty shoulders.

"Where to, Miss Trecarrel?" asked the footman, touching his hat ere he sprang to his place behind.

"To Bodmin," replied the elder sister: "we have shopping to do, Mr. Trevelyan;" and after a pause she added, "I have told you that they were odd people, those Devereaux; we were fools to come--don't you think so, Rose?"

"Perhaps, Mab."

"Do not judge so harshly," urged Audley. "What may be more probable than that both should feel excited after the last night's terror and--and----"

"Chivalry," suggested Rose Trecarrel, a little malice glittering in her fine eyes; but Audley remained silent.

Mabel and Rose Trecarrel were both eminently handsome girls. The elder was tall and showy, having dark grey eyes that filled, at times, with unusual lustre and had a wonderful variety of expression, but her chief beauties were perhaps her purity of complexion and the quantity and magnificence of her rich brown hair.

Rose was somewhat her counterpart--a large but very graceful girl, with clear, sparkling, hazel eyes, and hair much of the same hue, though her lashes and eyebrows were dark and well defined. Without attempting to describe her nose, we shall simply say it was a very pretty one, that seemed exactly to suit the expression of her eyes and the full-lipped yet little and alluring mouth below. Both girls were always dressed rather in the extreme of the mode, and were sure to be prime favourites at all balls, races, or meets to see the hounds throw off; and no entertainment in that part of the duchy was deemed complete without "the Trecarrels." No friend had ever accused them of being flirts, though fair enemies had frequently done so.

The General was very proud of his two daughters, and felt certain that both would make most eligible and wealthy marriages, when he took them to India, where he was in expectation daily of obtaining an important command.

For the time Audley Trevelyan was, what others had been, and others yet might be, a kind of privileged dangler in attendance on both sisters, and seemed to share their smiles and return attention to both in a pretty equal manner; thus both were somewhat disposed to resent the new and sudden interest he manifested in Sybil Devereaux.

Both were eminently dashing girls. Mabel, the elder, was perhaps the statelier of the two, but the beauty and manner of Rose were more sparkling and dazzling. Both sisters were highly accomplished, and both had that affected indifference to their own attractions, which is perhaps an indication of the strongest and most ineradicable vanity--for of those attractions they knew the full power and value.

"But who are those Devereaux?" asked Mabel, as a turn of the road hid the villa, during a pause filled up only by the subdued noise of the carriage wheels in their patent axle-boxes.

"You should know by this time, Trevelyan," added Rose, looking at him from under the long fringes of her eyes and her parasol, as she lay well back indolently yet gracefully among the soft cushions of the carriage.

"Nay; how should I, when you, who are neighbours, know nothing? Her father was a captain in some Line Regiment."

"_Her_ father--of whom were we speaking?" asked Rose.

Trevelyan coloured perceptibly, and Mabel laughed.

"Oh, she occupies his thoughts already, Mab! He was of some Line Regiment, that is pretty vague, and scarcely suits our Cornish standard of such things as family and so forth--least of all the standard formed by your uncle, the late Lord Lamorna."

"Oh, he was an absurd old goose--mad with pride, in fact."

"And barely remembered you in his will?"

"Precisely so," replied Audley, half amused and half provoked.

"They visit no one, and they make no acquaintances," said Rose, resuming the theme.

"They settled here without an introduction, I have heard, and gave it to be understood that they declined all acquaintance save with the Rector and Doctor."

"Neither of whom, Mab, are particular to a shade. I should not wonder, Audley, if your 'captain' were some returned convict or retired housebreaker in easy circumstances."

"Rose, you are too severe," urged Trevelyan; "Mrs. Devereaux is a kind of idol among the poor people here."

"We must all admit that she excels in chicken broth, is knowing in coals and tea, and great in corduroys, tobacco, and blankets; but fasten my bracelet, please," and she held forth coquettishly a slender wrist and a well-shaped hand, tightly cased in the finest of straw-coloured kid; and every movement of Rose Trecarrel, however quick and unstudied, was full of the poetry of action. "Thanks. If you will not admit that the mother of your fair friend is odd, you must that her father is so--or at least is ignorant of military etiquette, if he is a military man."

"How?"

"He has never left his card upon papa, which, in a solitary place like this, papa thinks he ought to have done, as it is the fashion in the service--going out I am aware--for the junior officer to wait upon the senior, though uninvited."

"Though a bore at times, it was a good old custom, I admit, but like many other fashions is as much gone out as square letter-paper, sand-boxes and sealing wax, stage coaches and queues."

"Then his son," she continued in an aggrieved tone, "on being appointed to papa's own Regiment, never had the politeness to leave a card upon us either!"

"Rose, you are quite a _Code Militaire_," said Trevelyan, laughing again. "Those Devereaux are thought handsome--I mean the mother and daughter."

"I have no wish to disparage the taste of the Cornish gentlemen----"

"None could afford to treat their taste with more indifference than you and Miss Trecarrel, who are both----"

"Both what?" asked Mabel, quickly.

"Above all comparison."

"Oh, we did not leave all our gallantry in the old coal-mine!"

"Excuse me, Rose," said Trevelyan, "it was originally a tin-mine."

"Pity it was not brass--eh, Audley?" replied Rose, laughing with a voice like a silver bell.

"Come, come, Rose," said Mabel, "you and Trevelyan are usually such good friends that I shall not have you to spar thus."

"We don't spar, it is only 'barrack-room chaff,' in which, as you may perceive, Mr. Trevelyan excels," retorted the piqued belle.

The truth was rather apparent to Audley, that the pretty--nay, the beautiful and hazel-eyed Rose was nettled, and seriously so. Hitherto she had considered the handsome ex-Lieutenant of Hussars, and now of the Cornish Light Infantry, as her own peculiar property--even more than her sister. He was to be her papa's Aide-de-camp in India--she had settled this, _nem. con._; and while on leave at home, he was to be her dangler, secret slave, and open adorer--husband in the end perhaps, if nothing better "turned up;" for Audley's expectations from his father, the barrister, as one of a family of five, were slender enough; and here he was too probably smitten with a little chit-faced interloper whom no one knew anything about!

There was a pause in the conversation, during which the carriage had passed St. Teath and St. Kew, with their quaint churches, and that of Egloshayle, on the right bank of the Camel, where it peeped up among the trees, when Rose returned to the charge.

"And you actually swung together at the end of a rope."

"At the end of a rope, as you say."

"How romantic!--how charming!"

"At least in one sense; yet I was glad enough when it was all over in safety."

"What! though doubtless, as Byron says,

'The situation had its charm.'"

"Fie, Rose--you quote _Don Juan_!" exclaimed Mabel.

"And why should not I, Mab, if the passage seems so familiar to you?"

"Rose, you are incorrigible!"

"Well, Audley, your fellow-soldiers must be proud of you when they hear of this feat of arms."

"We say _brother_-soldiers in the service," replied Trevelyan.

"I submit to the correction; it is like one from papa, who deems all civilians stupid fellows. And so you think she is a paragon of loveliness?" continued Rose Trecarrel, so bent on the game of tormenting him, that she cared little for showing her hand.

"I did not say so--do you, Rose?"

"Call me _Miss_ Rose, if you please," said she, with a charming air of pique on her lovely little lip.

"Well--where were we?"

"About the beauty of the girl you rescued--were slung in a rope with. How funny!" said Mabel.

"Of her beauty you can judge for yourselves; I have nothing to do with it," replied he wearily.

"Fortunate for you," laughed Rose, "as the girl's position in society seems so dubious, Audley."

"Call me Mr. Trevelyan, please, as we are to be on distant terms."

"Let us only have you in India, where we shall be ere long," said she, shaking her parasol threateningly, "and I shall have papa to put you under arrest."

"For what?"

"Conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman."

"As how, my fair friend?'

"Behaving rudely, petulantly, and insolently."

"To a pretty girl?"

"Yes--moreover, a daughter of the general on whose staff he is serving."

"And the sentence of the court will be, dismissal from her presence for ever."

"Have some mercy on him," said Mabel.

"You seem to know the duties of an aide-de-camp," said Audley, not ill-pleased to find himself an object of interest to two such handsome girls.

"Of papa's at least," said Rose: "to revise the dinner and visiting lists; to see Mab and me to and from all balls, kettle-drums, reviews, durbars, and so forth; to arrange picnics; to do all the squiring and shawling business, and to dance with us whenever we feel bored by some slow griff who can't keep time; to make bets of gloves, fans, and bouquets, and to lose them so nicely and so opportunely, that the payment thereof appears a veritable glory; to see us through the crush of the supper, and procure ices, creams, chicken, champagne, and crackers, no matter how the thermometer may stand, or how weary the punkahwallah may be--all of which are among the duties of an accomplished staff-officer."

"Oh, Rose, how your tongue runs on!" said Mabel.

"Poor fellow, I must spare him, for his heart seems divided between the mother and daughter; so I hope that this Captain Devereaux may soon be home, lest evil happen. But here we are at Bodmin!" she added, as the carriage, after quitting the highlands of granite and dreary moorland which extend to within four miles of the ancient assize town, rolled through its centre street.

"And now, if you choose," said Mabel, "Trevelyan, you may enjoy the indispensable cigar while we investigate the industrial treasures of a country draper's shop. We have but one hour to spare, and then homeward."

"Or we shall have papa consulting that remarkable watch, which he got from Sir John Keane after the storming of Ghuznee," added Rose, as disdaining Audley's proffered hand, she sprang lightly from the carriage steps.

So, for a time he was left to "do" the lions of Bodmin, the handsome old Norman church, the few pointed arches and dilapidated walls of the Leper Hospital, and so forth; and to his own reflections and thoughts, which, heedless of the sharp banter he had undergone, were all of Sybil--at that very moment struggling back into perfect consciousness from feverish delirium, and stealing from Winny Braddon the visiting-card he had recently left, that she might conceal it under her pillow.

To her, he was fast becoming the realisation of all her day-dreams--"the one moving spirit that animated the whole world of her united romances." He was,

"her first and passionate love, that all Which Eve hath left her daughters since her fall."

To Rose and to Mabel Trecarrel, he was simply one among the many "nice fellows" they had met with in society, and should meet again in plenty.