The Three Brides. Yonge Charlotte Mary

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СКАЧАТЬ seemed to arise in her mind with the opportunity.  Her two brothers were to spend the Christmas holidays with her, and she was in high spirits, and so communicative about them that she hardly observed how little interest Cecil took in Terry’s achievements.

      “Who is that,” she presently asked, “with those red-haired children?  It looked like Miss Vivian’s figure.”

      “I believe it was.  Julius and I often see her walking about the lanes; but she passes like—like a fire-flaught, whatever that is—just bows, and hardly ever speaks.”

      “She is a strange girl,” said Cecil.  “Lady Tyrrell says she cannot draw her into any of her interests, but she will go her own way.”

      “Like poor Anne?”

      “No, not out of mere moping and want of intellect, like Anne.  But Lady Tyrrell says she feels for her; she was brought a great deal too forward, and was made quite mistress of the house at Rockpier, being her father’s darling and all, and now it is trying to her, though it is quite wholesome, to be in her proper place.  It is a pity she is so bitter over it, and flies off her own way.”

      “That boy!” said Rosamond; “I hope she does something for his good.”

      “She teaches him, I believe; but there’s another instance of her strange ways.  She was absolutely vexed when Lady Tyrrell took him into the house, though he was her protégé, only because it was not done in her way.  It is a great trial to Camilla.”

      “I could fancy a reason for that,” said Rosamond.  “Julius does not like the tone of the household at all.”  But she added hastily, “Who could those children be?  They did not look quite like poor children.”

      “Ah! she is always taking up with some odd person in her own away,” said Cecil.  “But here we are.  Will you drive on to the hotel, or get out here?”

      When, at the end of two hours, the sisters-in-law met at the work-room, and Rosamond had taken a survey of the row of needle-women, coming up one by one to give their work, be paid and dismissed, there was a look of weariness and vexation on Cecil’s face.  She had found it less easy to keep order and hinder gossip, and had hardly known how to answer when that kind lady, Mrs. Miles Charnock, had been asked after; but she would have scorned to allow that she had missed her assistant, and only politely asked how Rosamond had sped.

      “Oh! excellently.  People were so well advised as to be out, so I paid off all my calls.”

      “You did not return your calls without Julius?”

      “There’s nothing he hates so much.  I would not have dragged him with me on any account.”

      “I think it is due to one’s self.”

      “Ah! but then I don’t care what is due to myself.  I saw a friend of yours, Cecil.”

      “Who?”

      “Mrs. Duncombe,” said Rosamond.  “I went to Pettitt’s—the little perfumer, you know, that Julius did so much for at the fire; and there she was, leaning on the counter, haranguing him confidentially upon setting an example with sanatory measures.”

      “Sanitary,” corrected Cecil; “sanitas is health, sano to cure.  People never know the difference.”

      “Certainly I don’t,” said Rosamond.  “It must be microscopic!”

      “Only it shows the difference between culture and the reverse,” said Cecil.

      “Well, you know, I’m the reverse,” said Rosamond, leaning sleepily back, and becoming silent; but Cecil was too anxious for intelligence to let her rest, and asked on what Mrs. Duncombe was saying.

      “I am not quite sure—she was stirring up his public spirit, I think, about the drainage; and they were both of them deploring the slackness and insensibility of the corporation, and canvassing for Mr. Whitlock, as I believe.  It struck me as a funny subject for a lady, but I believe she does not stick at trifles.”

      “No real work can be carried out by those who do,” said Cecil.

      “Oh!” added Rosamond, “I met Mrs. and Miss Bowater, and they desired me to say that Jenny can’t come till the dinner-party on the 20th, and then they will leave her.”

      “How cool to send a message instead of writing!”

      “Oh! she has always been like one of themselves, like a sister to them all.”

      “I can’t bear that sort of people.”

      “What sort?”

      “Who worm themselves in.”

      “Miss Bowater could have no occasion for worming.  They must be quite on equal terms.”

      “At any rate, she was only engaged to their poor relation.”

      “What poor relation?  Tell me!  Who told you?”

      “Raymond.  It was a young attorney—a kind of cousin of the Poynsett side, named Douglas.”

      “What?  There’s a cross in the churchyard to Elizabeth Douglas, daughter of Francis Poynsett, and wife of James Douglas, and at the bottom another inscription to Archibald Douglas, her son, lost in the Hippolyta.”

      “Yes, that must be the man.  He was flying from England, having been suspected of some embezzlement.”

      “Indeed!  And was Jenny engaged to him?  Julius told me that Mrs. Douglas had been his mother’s dearest friend, and that this Archie had been brought up with them, but he did not say any more.”

      “Perhaps he did not like having had a cousin in an attorney’s office.  I am sure I had no notion of such a thing.”

      Rosamond laughed till she was exhausted at the notion of Julius’s sharing the fastidious objections she heard in Cecil’s voice; and then, struck by the sadness of the story, she cried, “And that makes them all so fond of Miss Bowater.  Poor girl, what must she not have gone through!  And yet how cheerful she does look!”

      “People say,” proceeded Cecil, unable to resist the impulse to acquire a partaker in her half-jealous aversion, “that it was a great disappointment that Mrs. Poynsett could not make her sons like her as much as she did herself.”

      “Oh!” cried Rosamond, “how little peace we should have if we always heeded what people say!”

      “People that know,” persisted Cecil.

      “Not very wise or very kind people to say so,” quoth Rosamond; “though, by the bye, the intended sting is happily lost, considering that it lies among five.”

      “Why should you assume a sting?”

      “Because I see you are stung, and want to sting me,” said Rosamond, in so merry a tone that the earnestness was disguised.

      “I!  I’m not stung!  What Mrs. Poynsett or Miss Bowater may have schemed is nothing to me,” said Cecil, with all her childish dignity.

      “People talk of Irish imagination,” said Rosamond in her lazy meditative tone.

      “Well?” СКАЧАТЬ