As they got nearer home and the red roofs of the Dower House began to
glow in the ruddy sunlight above the meadows, Hubert began to shift the
conversation round to Isabel, and inquire when she was coming home.
Anthony was rather bored at this turn of the talk; but thought she would
be back by Christmas at the latest; and said that she was at
Northampton--and had Hubert ever seen such courage as Eliza's? But Hubert
would not be put off; but led the talk back again to the girl; and at
last told Anthony under promise of secrecy that he was fond of Isabel,
and wished to make her his wife;--and oh! did Anthony think she cared
really for him. Anthony stared and wondered and had no opinion at all on
the subject; but presently fell in love with the idea that Hubert should
be his brother-in-law and go hawking with him every day; and he added a
private romance of his own in which he and Mary Corbet should be at the
Dower House, with Hubert and Isabel at the Hall; while the elders, his
own father, Sir Nicholas, Mr. James, Lady Maxwell, and Mistress Torridon
had all taken up submissive and complacent attitudes in the middle
distance.
He was so pensive that evening that his father asked him at supper
whether he had not had a good day; which diverted his thoughts from
Mistress Corbet, and led him away from sentiment on a stream of his own
talk with long backwaters of description of this and that stoop, and of
exactly the points in which he thought the Maxwells' falconer had failed
in the training of Hubert's Jane.
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