LADY CHARLOTTE
Love-passages at a school must produce a ringing crisis if they are to
leave the rosy impression which spans the gap of holidays. Neither Matey
nor Browny returned to their yoke, and Cuper's boys recollected the
couple chiefly on Sundays. They remembered several of Matey's doings and
sayings: his running and high leaping, his bowling, a maxim or two of
his, and the tight strong fellow he was; also that the damsel's colour
distinctly counted for dark. She became nearly black in their minds.
Well, and Englishmen have been known to marry Indian princesses: some
have a liking for negresses. There are Nubians rather pretty in
pictures, if you can stand thick lips. Her colour does not matter,
provided the girl is of the right sort. The exchange of letters between
the lovers was mentioned. The discovery by Miss Vincent of their cool
habit of corresponding passed for an incident; and there it remained,
stiff as a poet, not being heated by a story to run. So the foregone
excitement lost warmth, and went out like a winter sun at noon or a match
lighted before the candle is handy.
Lord Ormont continued to be a subject of discussion from time to time,
for he was a name in the newspapers; and Mr. Shalders had been worked by
Matey Weyburn into a state of raw antagonism at the mention of the
gallant General; he could not avoid sitting in judgement on him.
According to Mr. Shalders, the opinion of all thoughtful people in
England was with John Company and the better part of the Press to condemn
Lord Ormont in his quarrel with the Commissioner of one of the Indian
provinces, who had the support of the Governor of his Presidency and of
the Viceroy; the latter not unreservedly, yet ostensibly inclined to
condemn a too prompt military hand. The Gordian knot of a difficulty cut
is agreeable in the contemplation of an official chief hesitating to use
the sword and benefiting by having it done for him. Lord Ormont
certainly cut the knot.
Mr. Shalders was cornered by the boys, coming at him one after another
without a stop, vowing it was the exercise of a military judgement upon
a military question at a period of urgency, which had brought about the
quarrel with the Commissioner and the reproof of the Governor. He
betrayed the man completely cornered by generalizing. He said--
"We are a civilian people; we pride ourselves on having civilian
methods."
"How can that be if we have won India with guns and swords?"
"But that splendid jewel for England's tiara won," said he (and he might
as well have said crown), "we are bound to sheathe the sword and govern
by the Book of the Law."
"But if they won't have the Book of the Law!"
"They knew the power behind it."
"Not if we knock nothing harder than the Book of the Law upon their
skulls."
"Happily for the country, England's councils are not directed by boys!"
"Ah, but we're speaking of India, Mr. Shalders."
"You are presuming to speak of an act of insubordination committed by a
military officer under civilian command."
"What if we find an influential prince engaged in conspiracy?"
"We look for proof."
"Suppose we have good proof?"
"We summon him to exonerate himself."
"No; we mount and ride straight away into his territory, spot the
treason, deport him, and rule in his place!"
It was all very well for Mr. Shalders to say he talked to boys; he was
cornered again, as his shrug confessed.
The boys asked among themselves whether he would have taken the same view
if his Murat had done it!
These illogical boys fought for Matey Weyburn in their defence of Lord
Ormont. Somewhere, they wee sure, old Matey was hammering to the same
end--they could hear him. Thought of him inspired them to unwonted
argumentative energy, that they might support his cause; and scatter the
gloomy prediction of the school, as going to the dogs now Matey had left.
The subject provoked everywhere in Great Britain a division similar to
that between master and boys at Cuper's establishment: one party for our
modern English magisterial methods with Indians, the other for the
decisive Oriental at the early time, to suit their native tastes; and the
Book of the Law is to be conciliatingly addressed to their sentiments by
a benign civilizing Power, or the sword is out smartly at the hint of a
warning to protect the sword's conquests. Under one aspect we appear
potteringly European; under another, drunk of the East.
Lord Ormont's ride at the head of two hundred horsemen across a stretch
of country including hill and forest, to fall like a bolt from the blue
on the suspected Prince in the midst of his gathering warriors, was a
handsome piece of daring, and the high-handed treatment of the Prince was
held by his advocates to be justified by the provocation, and the result.
He scattered an unprepared body of many hundreds, who might have
enveloped him, and who would presumptively have stood their ground, had
they not taken his handful to be the advance of regiments. These are the
deeds that win empires! the argument in his favour ran. Are they of a
character to maintain empires? the counter-question was urged. Men of a
deliberative aspect were not wanting in approval of the sharp and summary
of the sword in air when we have to deal with Indians. They chose to
regard it as a matter of the dealing with Indians, and put aside the
question of the contempt of civil authority.
Counting the cries, Lord Ormont won his case. Festival aldermen, smoking
clubmen, buckskin squires, obsequious yet privately excitable tradesmen,
sedentary coachmen and cabmen, of Viking descent, were set to think like
boys about him: and the boys, the women, and the poets formed a tipsy
chorea. Journalists, on the whole, were fairly halved, as regarded
numbers. In relation to weight, they were with the burgess and the
presbyter; they preponderated heavily in the direction of England's
burgess view of all cases disputed between civilian and soldier.
But that was when the peril was over.
Admirers of Lord Ormont enjoyed a perusal of a letter addressed by him to
the burgess's journal; and so did his detractors. The printing of it was
an act of editorial ruthlessness. The noble soldier had no mould in his
intellectual or educational foundry for the casting of sentences; and the
editor's leading type to the letter, without further notice of the
writer--who was given a prominent place or scaffolding for the execution
of himself publicly, if it pleased him to do that thing--tickled the
critical mind. Lord Ormont wrote intemperately.
His Titanic hurling of blocks against critics did no harm to an enemy
skilled in the use of trimmer weapons, notably the fine one of letting
big missiles rebound. He wrote from India, with Indian heat--"curry and
capsicums," it was remarked. He dared to claim the countenance of the
Commander-in-chief of the Army of India for an act disapproved by the
India House. Other letters might be on their way, curryer than the
preceding, his friends feared; and might also be malevolently printed,
similarly commissioning the reverberation of them to belabour his name
before the public. Admirers were still prepared to admire; but aldermen
not at the feast, squire-archs not in the saddle or at the bottle, some
few of the juvenile and female fervent, were becoming susceptible to a
frosty critical tone in the public pronunciation of Lord Ormont's name
since the printing of his letter and the letters it called forth. None
of them doubted that his case was good. The doubt concerned the effect
on it of his manner of pleading it. And if he damaged his case, he
compromised his admirers. Why, the case of a man who has cleverly won a
bold stroke for his country must be good, as long as he holds his tongue.
A grateful country will right him in the end: he has only to wait, and
not so very long. "This I did: now examine it." Nothing more needed to
be said by him, if that.
True, he has a temper. It is owned that he is a hero. We take him with
his qualities, impetuosity being one, and not unsuited to his arm of the
service, as be has shown. If his temper is high, it is an element of a
character proved heroical. So has the sun his blotches, and we believe
that they go to nourish the luminary, rather than that they are a disease
of the photosphere.
Lord Ormont's apologists had to contend with anecdotes and dicta now
pouring in from offended Britons, for illustration of an impetuosity
fit to make another Charley XII. of Sweden--a gratuitous Coriolanus
haughtiness as well, new among a people accustomed socially to bow the
head to their nobles, and not, of late, expecting a kick for their pains.
Newspapers wrote of him that, "a martinet to subordinates, he was known
for the most unruly of lieutenants." They alluded to current sayings,
as that he "habitually took counsel of his horse on the field when a
movement was entrusted to his discretion." Numerous were the
journalistic sentences running under an air of eulogy of the lordly
warrior purposely to be tripped, and producing their damnable effect,
despite the obvious artifice. The writer of the letter from Bombay,
signed Ormont, was a born subject for the antithetical craftsmen's
tricky springes.
He was, additionally, of infamous repute for morale in burgess
estimation, from his having a keen appreciation of female beauty and
a prickly sense of masculine honour. The stir to his name roused
pestilential domestic stories. In those days the aristocrat still
claimed licence, and eminent soldier-nobles, comporting themselves as
imitative servants of their god Mars, on the fields of love and war,
stood necessarily prepared to vindicate their conduct as the field of the
measured paces, without deeming themselves bounden to defend the course
they took. Our burgess, who bowed head to his aristocrat, and hired the
soldier to fight for him, could not see that such mis-behaviour
necessarily ensued. Lord Ormont had fought duels at home and abroad.
His readiness to fight again, and against odds, and with a totally unused
weapon, was exhibited by his attack on the Press in the columns of the
Press. It wore the comical face to the friends deploring it, which
belongs to things we do that are so very like us. They agreed with his
devoted sister, Lady Charlotte Eglett, as to the prudence of keeping him
out of England for a time, if possible.
At the first perusal of the letter, Lady Charlotte quitted her place in
Leicestershire, husband, horses, guests, the hunt, to scour across a
vacant London and pick up acquaintances under stress to be spots there in
the hunting season, with them to gossip for counsel on the subject of
"Ormont's hand-grenade," and how to stop and extinguish a second. She
was a person given to plain speech. "Stinkpot" she called it, when
acknowledging foul elements in the composition and the harm it did to
the unskilful balist. Her view of the burgess English imaged a mighty
monster behind bars, to whom we offer anything but our hand. As soon as
he gets held of that he has you; he won't let it loose with flesh on the
bones. We must offend him--we can't be man or woman without offending
his tastes and his worships; but while we keep from contact (i.e.
intercommunication) he may growl, he is harmless. Witness the many
occasions when her brother offended worse, and had been unworried, only
growled at, and distantly, not in a way to rouse concern; and at the neat
review, or procession into the City, or public display of any sort,
Ormont had but to show himself, he was the popular favourite immediately.
He had not committed the folly of writing a letter to a newspaper then.
Lady Charlotte paid an early visit to the office of the great London
solicitor, Arthur Abner, who wielded the law as an instrument of
protection for countless illustrious people afflicted by what they stir
or attract in a wealthy metropolis. She went simply to gossip of her
brother's affairs with a refreshing man of the world, not given to
circumlocutions, and not afraid of her: she had no deeper object;
but fancying she heard the clerk, on his jump from the stool, inform her
that Mr. Abner was out, "Out?" she cried, and rattled the room, thumping,
under knitted brows. "Out of town?" For a man of business taking
holidays, when a lady craves for gossip, disappointed her faith in him as
cruelly as the shut-up, empty inn the broken hunter knocking at a hollow
door miles off home.
Mr. Abner, hatted and gloved and smiling, came forth. "Going out, the
man meant, Lady Charlotte. At your service for five minutes."
She complimented his acuteness, in the remark, "You see I've only come to
chat," and entered his room.
He led her to her theme: "The excitement is pretty well over."
"My brother's my chief care--always was. I'm afraid he'll be
pitchforking at it again, and we shall have another blast. That letter
ought never to have been printed. That editor deserves the horsewhip for
letting it appear. If he prints a second one I shall treat him as a
personal enemy."
"Better make a friend of him."
"How?"
"Meet him at my table."
She jumped an illumined half-about on her chair. "So I will, then. What
are the creature's tastes?"
"Hunts, does he?" The editor rose in her mind from the state of neuter
to something of a man. "I recollect an article in that paper on the
Ormont duel. I hate duelling, but I side with my brother. I had to
laugh, though. Luckily, there's no woman on hand at present, as far as
I know. Ormont's not likely to be hooked by garrison women or blacks.
Those coloured women--some of ours too--send the nose to the clouds;
not a bad sign for health. And there are men like that old Cardinal
Guicciardini tells of...hum! Ormont's not one of them. I hope he'll
stay in India till this blows over, or I shall be hearing of
provocations."
"You have seen the Duke?"
She nodded. Her reserve was a summary of the interview. "Kind, as he
always is," she said. "Ormont has no chance of employment unless there's
a European war. They can't overlook him in case of war. He'll have to
pray for that."
"Let us hope we shan't get it."
"My wish; but I have to think of my brother. If he's in England with no
employment, he's in a mess with women and men both. He kicks if he's
laid aside to rust. He has a big heart. That's what I said: all he
wants is to serve his country. If you won't have war, give him Gibraltar
or Malta, or command of one of our military districts. The South-eastern
'll be vacant soon. He'd like to be Constable of the Castle, and have an
eye on France."
"I think he's fond of the French?"
"Loves the French. Expects to have to fight them all the same. He loves
his country best. Here's the man everybody's abusing!"
"I demur, my lady. I was dining the other day with a client of mine, and
a youngster was present who spoke of Lord Ormont in a way I should like
you to have heard. He seemed to know the whole of Lord Ormont's career,
from the time of the ride to Paraguay up to the capture of the plotting
Rajah. He carried the table."
"Good boy! We must turn to the boys for justice, then. Name your day
for this man, this editor."
"I will see him. You shall have the day to-night."
Lady Charlotte and the editor met. She was racy, he anecdotal. Stag,
fox, and hare ran before them, over fields and through drawing-rooms: the
scent was rich. They found that they could talk to one another as they
thought; that he was not the Isle-bound burgess, nor she the postured
English great lady; and they exchanged salt, without which your current
scandal is of exhausted savour. They enjoyed the peculiar novel relish
of it, coming from a social pressman and a dame of high society. The
different hemispheres became known as one sphere to these birds of broad
wing convening in the upper blue above a quartered carcase earth.
A week later a letter, the envelope of a bulky letter in Lord Ormont's
handwriting, reached Lady Charlotte. There was a line from the editor:
"Would it please your ladyship to have this printed?"
She read the letter, and replied:
"Come to me for six days; you shall have the best mount in the
county."
An editor devoid of malice might probably have forborne to print a letter
that appealed to Lady Charlotte, or touched her sensations, as if a
glimpse of the moon, on the homeward ride in winter on a nodding horse,
had suddenly bared to view a precipitous quarry within two steps. There
is no knowing: few men can forbear to tell a spicy story of their
friends; and an editor, to whom an exhibition of the immensely
preposterous on the part of one writing arrogantly must be provocative,
would feel the interests of his Journal, not to speak of the claims of
readers, pluck at him when he meditated the consignment of such a
precious composition to extinction. Lady Charlotte withheld a sight of
the letter from Mr. Eglett. She laid it in her desk, understanding well
that it was a laugh lost to the world. Poets could reasonably feign it
to shake the desk inclosing it. She had a strong sense of humour; her
mind reverted to the desk in a way to make her lips shut grimly. She
sided with her brother.
Only pen in hand did he lay himself open to the enemy. In his personal
intercourse he was the last of men to be taken at a disadvantage. Lady
Charlotte was brought round to the distasteful idea of some help coming
from a legitimate adjunct at his elbow: a restraining woman--wife, it had
to be said. And to name the word wife for Thomas Rowsley, Earl of
Ormont, put up the porcupine quills she bristled with at the survey of a
sex thirsting, and likely to continue thirsting, for such honour. What
woman had she known fit to bear the name? She had assumed the judicial
seat upon the pretensions of several, and dismissed them to their limbo,
after testifying against them. Who is to know the fit one in these mines
of deception? Women of the class offering wives decline to be taken on
trial; they are boxes of puzzles--often dire surprises. Her brother knew
them well enough to shy at the box. Her brother Rowsley had a funny
pride, like a boy at a game, at the never having been caught by one among
the many he made captive. She let him have it all to himself.
He boasted it to a sister sharing the pride exultant in the cry of the
hawk, scornful of ambitions poultry, a passed finger-post to the plucked,
and really regretful that no woman had been created fit for him. When
she was not aiding with her brother, women, however contemptible for
their weakness, appeared to her as better than barn-door fowl, or vermin
in their multitudes gnawing to get at the cheese-trap. She could be
humane, even sisterly, with women whose conduct or prattle did not
outrage plain sense, just as the stickler for the privileges of her class
was large-heartedly charitable to the classes flowing in oily orderliness
round about below it--if they did so flow. Unable to read woman's
character, except upon the broadest lines as it were the spider's main
threads of its web, she read men minutely, from the fact that they were
neither mysteries nor terrors to her; but creatures of importunate
appetites, humorous objects; very manageable, if we leave the road to
their muscles, dress their wounds, smoothe their creases, plume their
vanity; and she had an unerring eye for the man to be used when a blow
was needed, methods for setting him in action likewise. She knew how
much stronger than ordinary men the woman who can put them in motion.
They can be set to serve as pieces of cannon, under compliments on their
superior powers, which were not all undervalued by her on their own
merits, for she worshipped strength. But the said, with a certain amount
of truth, that the women unaware of the advantage Society gave them (as
to mastering men) were fools.
Tender, is not a word coming near to Lady Charlotte. Thoughtful on
behalf of the poor foolish victims of men she was. She had saved some,
avenged others. It should be stated, that her notion of saving was the
saving of them from the public: she had thrown up a screen. The saving
of them from themselves was another matter--hopeless, to her thinking.
How preach at a creature on the bend of passion's rapids! One might as
well read a chapter from the Bible to delirious patients. When once a
woman is taken with the love-passion, we must treat her as bitten; hide
her antics from the public: that is the principal business. If she
recovers, she resumes her place, and horrid old Nature, who drove her to
the frenzy, is unlikely to bother or, at least, overthrow her again,
unless she is one of the detestable wantons, past compassion or
consideration. In the case reviewed, the woman has gone through fire,
and is none the worse for her experiences: worth ten times what she was,
to an honest man, if men could be got to see it. Some do. Of those men
who do not, Lady Charlotte spoke with the old family-nurse humour, which
is familiar with the tricks and frailties of the infants; and it is a
knife to probe the male, while seemingly it does the part of the napkin--
pities and pats. They expect a return of much for the little that is
next to nothing. They are fall of expectations: and of what else?
They are hard bargainers.
She thought this of men; and she liked men by choice. She had old
nurse's preference for the lustier male child. The others are puling
things, easier to rear, because they bend better; and less esteemed,
though they give less trouble, rouse less care. But when it came to the
duel between the man and the woman, her sense of justice was moved to
join her with the party of her unfairly handled sisters--a strong party,
if it were not so cowardly, she had to think.
Mr. Eglett, her husband, accepted her--accepted the position into which
he naturally fell beside her, and the ideas she imposed on him; for she
never went counter to his principles. These were the fixed principles of
a very wealthy man, who abhorred debt, and was punctilious in veracity,
scrupulous in cleanliness of mind and body, devoted to the honour of his
country, the interests of his class. She respected the high landmark
possessing such principles; and she was therefore enabled to lead without
the wish to rule. As it had been between them at the beginning, so it
was now, when they were grandparents running on three lines of progeny
from two daughters and a son: they were excellent friends. Few couples
can say more. The union was good English grey--that of a prolonged
November, to which we are reconciled by occasions for the hunt and the
gun. She was, nevertheless, an impassioned woman. The feeling for her
brother helped to satisfy her heart's fires, though as little with her
brother as with her husband was she demonstrative. Lord Ormont
disrelished the caresses of relatives.
She, for her part, had so strong a sympathy on behalf of poor gentlemen
reduced to submit to any but a young woman's hug, that when, bronzed from
India, he quitted the carriage and mounted her steps at Olmer, the desire
to fling herself on his neck and breast took form in the words: "Here you
are home again, Rowsley; glad to have you." They shook hands firmly.
He remained three days at Olmer. His temper was mild, his frame of mind
bad as could be. Angry evaporations had left a residuum of solid scorn
for these "English," who rewarded soldierly services as though it were a
question of damaged packages of calico. He threatened to take the first
offer of a foreign State "not in insurrection." But clear sky was
overhead. He was the Rowsley of the old boyish delight in field sports,
reminiscences of prowlings and trappings in the woods, gropings along
water-banks, enjoyment of racy gossip. He spoke wrathfully of "one of
their newspapers" which steadily persisted in withholding from
publication every letter he wrote to it, after printing the first.
And if it printed one, why not the others?
Lady Charlotte put it on the quaintness of editors.
He had found in London, perhaps, reason for saying that he should do
well to be "out of this country" as early as he could; adding, presently,
that he meant to go, though "it broke his heart to keep away from a six
months' rest at Steignton," his Wiltshire estate.
No woman was in the field. Lady Charlotte could have submitted to the
intrusion of one of those at times wholesome victims, for the sake of the
mollification the unhappy proud thing might bring to a hero smarting
under injustice at the hands of chiefs and authorities.
He passed on to Steignton, returned to London, and left England for
Spain, as he wrote word, saying he hoped to settle at Steignton neat
year. He was absent the next year, and longer. Lady Charlotte had the
surprising news that Steignton was let, shooting and all, for five years;
and he had no appointment out of England or at home. When he came to
Olmer again he was under one of his fits of reserve, best undisturbed.
Her sympathy with a great soldier snubbed, an active man rusting, kept
her from remonstrance.
Three years later she was made meditative by the discovery of a woman's
being absolutely in the field, mistress of the field; and having been
there for a considerable period, dating from about the time when he
turned his back on England to visit a comrade-in-arms condemned by the
doctors to pass the winter in Malaga; and it was a young woman, a girl
in her teens, a handsome girl. Handsome was to be expected; Ormont
bargained for beauty. But report said the girl was very handsome, and
showed breeding: she seemed a foreigner, walked like a Goddess, sat her
horse the perfect Amazon. Rumour called her a Spaniard.
"Not if she rides!" Lady Charlotte cut that short.
Rumour had subsequently more to say. The reporter in her ear did not
confirm it, and she was resolutely deaf to a story incredible of her
brother--the man, of all men living, proudest of his name, blood,
station. So proud was he by nature, too, that he disdained to complain
of rank injustice; he maintained a cheerful front against adversity and
obloquy. And this man of complete self-command, who has every form of
noble pride, gets cajoled like a twenty-year-old yahoo at college! Do
you imagine it? To suppose of a man cherishing the name of Ormont, that
he would bestow it legally on a woman, a stranger, and imperil his race
by mixing blood with a creature of unknown lineage, was--why, of course,
it was to suppose him struck mad, and there never had been madness among
the Ormonts: they were too careful of the purity of the strain. Lady
Charlotte talked. She was excited, and ran her sentences to blanks, a
cunning way for ministering consolation to her hearing, where the
sentence intended a question, and the blank ending caught up the query
tone and carried it dwindling away to the most distant of throttled
interrogatives. She had, in this manner, only to ask,--her hearing
received the comforting answer it desired; for she could take that thin
far sound as a travelling laughter of incredulity, triumphant derision.
This meant to her--though she scarcely knew it, though the most wilful of
women declined to know it--a state of alarm. She had said of her brother
in past days that he would have his time of danger after striking sixty.
The dangerous person was to be young.
But, then, Ormont had high principles with regard to the dues to his
family. His principles could always be trusted. The dangerous young
person would have to be a person of lineage, of a certain station at
least: no need for a titled woman, only for warranted good blood. Is
that to be found certificated out of the rolls of Society? It may just
possibly be found, without certificate, however, in those muddled caverns
where the excluded intermingle. Here and there, in a peasant family,
or a small country tradesman's just raised above a peasant, honest
regenerating blood will be found. Nobles wanting refreshment from the
soil might do worse than try a slip of one of those juicy weeds; ill-
fated, sickly Royalties would be set-up striding through another half-
century with such invigoration, if it could be done for them! There are
tales. The tales are honourably discredited by the crazy constitutions
of the heirs to the diadem.
Yes, but we are speculating on the matter seriously, as though it were
one of intimate concern to the family. What is there to make us think
that Ormont would marry? Impossible to imagine him intimidated.
Unlikely that he, a practised reader of women, having so little of the
woman in him, would be melted by a wily girl; as women in the twilight
situation have often played the trick to come into the bright beams.
How? They do a desperate thing, and call it generosity, and then they
appeal from it to my lord's generosity; and so the two generosities drive
off in a close carriage with a friend and a professional landlady for the
blessing of the parson, and are legitimately united. Women have won
round fools to give way in that way. And quite right too! thought Lady
Charlotte, siding with nature and justice, as she reflected that no woman
created would win round her brother to give way in that way. He was too
acute. The moment the woman showed sign of becoming an actress, her doom
was written. "Poor idiot!" was not uncharitably inscribed by the
sisterly lady on the tombstone of hopes aimed with scarce pardonable
ambition at her brother.
She blew away the rumour. Ormont, she vowed, had not entitled any woman
to share and bear his title. And this was her interpretation of the
report: he permitted (if he did permit) the woman to take his name,
that he might have a scornful fling at the world maltreating him.
Besides, the name was not published, it was not to be seen in the papers;
it passed merely among male friends, tradesmen, servants: no great harm
in that.
Listen further. Here is an unknown girl: why should he marry her?
A girl consenting to the place beside a man of his handsome ripe age,
is either bought, or she is madly enamoured; she does not dictate terms.
Ormont is not of the brute buyers in that market. One sees it is the
girl who leads the dance. A girl is rarely so madly enamoured as when
she falls in love with her grandfather; she pitches herself at his head.
This had not happened for the first time in Ormont's case; and he had
never proposed marriage. Why should he do it now?
But again, if the girl has breeding to some extent, he might think it her
due that she should pass under the safeguard of his name, out of sight.
Then, so far the report is trustworthy. We blow the rumour out of
belief. A young woman there is: she is not a wife. Lady Charlotte
allowed her the fairly respectable post of Hecate of the Shades, as long
as the girl was no pretender to the place and name in the upper sphere.
Her deductions were plausible, convincing to friends shaken by her
vehement manner of coming at them. She convinced herself by means of her
multitude of reasons for not pursuing inquiry. Her brother said nothing.
There was no need for him to speak. He seemed on one or two occasions in
the act of getting himself together for the communication of a secret;
and she made ready to listen hard, with ears, eyebrows, shut month, and a
gleam at the back of her eyes, for a signification of something she would
refer him to after he had spoken. He looked at her and held his peace,
or virtually held it,--that is, he said not one word on the subject she
was to have told him she had anticipated. Lady Charlotte ascribed it to
his recollection of the quick blusher, the pained blusher, she was in her
girlhood at mention or print of the story of men and women. Who, not
having known her, could conceive it! But who could conceive that, behind
the positive, plain-dealing, downright woman of the world, there was at
times, when a nerve was touched or an old blocked path of imagination
thrown open, a sensitive youthfulness; still quick to blush as far as the
skin of a grandmother matron might show it!