The Complete Works. George Eliot

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СКАЧАТЬ it easy to attend to her toilette. They would ask her to sing this evening, and she would sing well. Miss Assher should not think her utterly insignificant. So she put on her grey silk gown and her cherry coloured ribbon with as much care as if she had been herself the betrothed; not forgetting the pair of round pearl earrings which Sir Christopher had told Lady Cheverel to give her, because Tina’s little ears were so pretty.

      Quick as she had been, she found Sir Christopher and Lady Cheverel in the drawing-room chatting with Mr. Gilfil, and telling him how handsome Miss Assher was, but how entirely unlike her mother—apparently resembling her father only.

      ‘Aha!’ said Sir Christopher, as he turned to look at Caterina, ‘what do you think of this, Maynard? Did you ever see Tina look so pretty before? Why, that little grey gown has been made out of a bit of my lady’s, hasn’t it? It doesn’t take anything much larger than a pocket-handkerchief to dress the little monkey.’

      Lady Cheverel, too, serenely radiant in the assurance a single glance had given her of Lady Assher’s inferiority, smiled approval, and Caterina was in one of those moods of self possession and indifference which come as the ebb-tide between the struggles of passion. She retired to the piano, and busied herself with arranging her music, not at all insensible to the pleasure of being looked at with admiration the while, and thinking that, the next time the door opened, Captain Wybrow would enter, and she would speak to him quite cheerfully. But when she heard him come in, and the scent of roses floated towards her, her heart gave one great leap. She knew nothing till he was pressing her hand, and saying, in the old easy way, ‘Well, Caterina, how do you do? You look quite blooming.’

      She felt her cheeks reddening with anger that he could speak and look with such perfect nonchalance. Ah! he was too deeply in love with some one else to remember anything he had felt for her. But the next moment she was conscious of her folly;—‘as if he could show any feeling then!’ This conflict of emotions stretched into a long interval the few moments that elapsed before the door opened again, and her own attention, as well as that of all the rest, was absorbed by the entrance of the two ladies.

      The daughter was the more striking, from the contrast she presented to her mother, a round-shouldered, middle-sized woman, who had once had the transient pink-and-white beauty of a blonde, with ill-defined features and early embonpoint. Miss Assher was tall, and gracefully though substantially formed, carrying herself with an air of mingled graciousness and self-confidence; her dark-brown hair, untouched by powder, hanging in bushy curls round her face, and falling in long thick ringlets nearly to her waist. The brilliant carmine tint of her well-rounded cheeks, and the finely-cut outline of her straight nose, produced an impression of splendid beauty, in spite of commonplace brown eyes, a narrow forehead, and thin lips. She was in mourning, and the dead black of her crape dress, relieved here and there by jet ornaments, gave the fullest effect to her complexion, and to the rounded whiteness of her arms, bare from the elbow. The first coup d’œil was dazzling, and as she stood looking down with a gracious smile on Caterina, whom Lady Cheverel was presenting to her, the poor little thing seemed to herself to feel, for the first time, all the folly of her former dream.

      ‘We are enchanted with your place, Sir Christopher,’ said Lady Assher, with a feeble kind of pompousness, which she seemed to be copying from some one else: ‘I’m sure your nephew must have thought Farleigh wretchedly out of order. Poor Sir John was so very careless about keeping up the house and grounds. I often talked to him about it, but he said, “Pooh pooh! as long as my friends find a good dinner and a good bottle of wine, they won’t care about my ceilings being rather smoky.” He was so very hospitable, was Sir John.’

      ‘I think the view of the house from the park, just after we passed the bridge, particularly fine,’ said Miss Assher, interposing rather eagerly, as if she feared her mother might be making infelicitous speeches, ‘and the pleasure of the first glimpse was all the greater because Anthony would describe nothing to us beforehand. He would not spoil our first impressions by raising false ideas. I long to go over the house, Sir Christopher, and learn the history of all your architectural designs, which Anthony says have cost you so much time and study.’

      ‘Take care how you set an old man talking about the past, my dear,’ said the Baronet; ‘I hope we shall find something pleasanter for you to do than turning over my old plans and pictures. Our friend Mr. Gilfil here has found a beautiful mare for you and you can scour the country to your heart’s content. Anthony has sent us word what a horsewoman you are.’

      Miss Assher turned to Mr. Gilfil with her most beaming smile, and expressed her thanks with the elaborate graciousness of a person who means to be thought charming, and is sure of success.

      ‘Pray do not thank me,’ said Mr. Gilfil, ‘till you have tried the mare. She has been ridden by Lady Sara Linter for the last two years; but one lady’s taste may not be like another’s in horses, any more than in other matters.’

      While this conversation was passing, Captain Wybrow was leaning against the mantelpiece, contenting himself with responding from under his indolent eyelids to the glances Miss Assher was constantly directing towards him as she spoke. ‘She is very much in love with him,’ thought Caterina. But she was relieved that Anthony remained passive in his attentions. She thought, too, that he was looking paler and more languid than usual. ‘If he didn’t love her very much—if he sometimes thought of the past with regret, I think I could bear it all, and be glad to see Sir Christopher made happy.’

      During dinner there was a little incident which confirmed these thoughts. When the sweets were on the table, there was a mould of jelly just opposite Captain Wybrow, and being inclined to take some himself, he first invited Miss Assher, who coloured, and said, in rather a sharper key than usual, ‘Have you not learned by this time that I never take jelly?’

      ‘Don’t you?’ said Captain Wybrow, whose perceptions were not acute enough for him to notice the difference of a semitone. ‘I should have thought you were fond of it. There was always some on the table at Farleigh, I think.’

      ‘You don’t seem to take much interest in my likes and dislikes.’

      ‘I’m too much possessed by the happy thought that you like me,’ was the ex officio reply, in silvery tones.

      This little episode was unnoticed by every one but Caterina. Sir Christopher was listening with polite attention to Lady Assher’s history of her last man-cook, who was first-rate at gravies, and for that reason pleased Sir John—he was so particular about his gravies, was Sir John: and so they kept the man six years in spite of his bad pastry. Lady Cheverel and Mr. Gilfil were smiling at Rupert the bloodhound, who had pushed his great head under his master’s arm, and was taking a survey of the dishes, after snuffing at the contents of the Baronet’s plate.

      When the ladies were in the drawing-room again, Lady Assher was soon deep in a statement to Lady Cheverel of her views about burying people in woollen.

      ‘To be sure, you must have a woollen dress, because it’s the law, you know; but that need hinder no one from putting linen underneath. I always used to say, “If Sir John died tomorrow, I would bury him in his shirt;” and I did. And let me advise you to do so by Sir Christopher. You never saw Sir John, Lady Cheverel. He was a large tall man, with a nose just like Beatrice, and so very particular about his shirts.’

      Miss Assher, meanwhile, had seated herself by Caterina, and, with that smiling affability which seems to say, ‘I am really not at all proud, though you might expect it of me,’ said,—‘Anthony tells me you sing so very beautifully. I hope we shall hear you this evening.’

      ‘O yes,’ said Caterina, quietly, without smiling; ‘I always sing when I am wanted to sing.’

      ‘I envy СКАЧАТЬ