“You should be whipped for the slander, child. But I suspect the
truth. We don’t run but from those we have a partiality for. Watch
Moll and Meg at dragging-time in the fairs.”
She cried “Diana!” and, looking up horrified into my face, read its
mockery, and, gasping out, “I am very unhappy,” fell away from me.
“You poor little creature!” I cried, fiercely moved by her distress;
“if _you_ don’t know what madam means, _I do_. ’Tis the way with the
quality to pension off their discarded fancies on Jack or Molly.”
She showed by her manner that she did not understand me, but my
indignation would not let me explain. Moreover, I was too satisfied
with my own solution to wish it contradicted.
“Never mind,” I said, stamping my foot. “Tell me everything--every
word.”
Then it all came out in a flood: How, since my removal, madam had
visited more and more upon her innocent head the trespasses of her
poor little friend and sister; how this habit, vindictive at the best,
had grown into a very fury of spite (which I laughed much to hear
about) when de Crespigny’s wandering fancy had begun (as it inevitably
had) to turn from the hop-pole, which had invited it to be wreathed
about itself, to the ripe little sapling growing so snug beside; how,
in her jealousy, my lady had driven her below stairs, and at last made
her altogether consort with the servants as her proper peers, who had
only been lifted by her generosity out of the gutter; how, not content
with this, literal, debasement, she had thought further to soil her by
forcing upon her the reversion of her tipsy _cavaliere servente_ (as,
anyhow, I chose to think him), a tyranny which had at last driven the
soft little creature to despair and rebellion. So she told me all,
though with less force and conviction, poor simplicity, than I have
chosen to put into her relation.
“And you was gone--and how did you escape, Diana?--and I hated Mr. de
Crespigny as much as I hate this one--and it all makes no difference,
and I don’t know how I can bear it longer,” she cried, in a breath.
“Very well, then,” I said, and looked sternly at her. “You must find
the courage to run away.”
I had thought that the very suggestion would make her faint; but
instead, to my surprise, a rose of colour flew to her pale cheeks.
“Yes,” she whispered. “If I only knew where!”
O, fie on madam! She must have been a cruel task-mistress, indeed!
“There!” I said, “you naughty little thing! But confess to me first
what you have heard tell about your sister.”
“What does that matter,” she murmured, hanging her head, “when nothing
in the world can ever alter my love for you?”
I took her in my arms, and touched her little simple toilette into
shape here and there.
“You are very desperate, in truth, child. What do you say--will you
risk all, and come and be my duenna? You are older than I, sure, and
shall defend your little sister from slander. I will get the earl to
consent, if you will say yes.”
She seemed beyond answering, but could only cling to me in a kind of
frenzied rapture.
“And I will make a fine bird of my Jenny Wren,” I said, still busy
with her; “for she has a thousand pretty little modest graces which
will do me a vast credit in the dressing. You shall keep your natural
hair, miss, for powder, since the tax, is not _à la mode_ with the
best; but a gentleman’s arm--_le cas échéant_--would never go round
this waist by three inches.”