Chapter 18
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Merry days were these at Thornfield Hall; and busy days too: how different from the first three months of stillness, monotony, and solitude I had passed beh its roof! All sad feelings seemed now driven from the house, all gloomy associations fotten: there was life everywhere, movement all day long. You could not now traverse the gallery, once so hushed, er the front chambers, once so tenantless, without entering a smart lady’s-maid or a dandy valet.The kit, the butler’s pantry, the servants’ hall, the entrance hall, were equally alive; and the saloons were only left void and still when the blue sky and hal sunshine of the genial spriher called their octs out into the grounds. Evehat weather was broken, and tinuous rai in for some days, no damp seemed cast over enjoyment: indoor amusements only became more lively and varied, in sequence of the stop put to outdaiety.
I wondered what they were going to do the first evening a ge of eai roposed: they spoke of “playing charades,” but in my ignorance I did not uand the term. The servants were called in, the dining-room tables wheeled away, the lights otherwise disposed, the chairs placed in a semicircle opposite the arch. While Mr. Rochester and the entlemen directed these alterations, the ladies were running up and down stairs ringing for their maids. Mrs. Fairfax was summoo give information respeg the resources of the house in shawls, dresses, draperies of any kind; aain wardrobes of the third storey were ransacked, and their tents, in the shape of bro<mark>藏书网</mark>caded and hooped petticoats, satin sacques, black modes, lace lappets, &c., were brought down in armfuls by the abigails; then a sele was made, and such things as were chosen were carried to the boudoir within the drawing-room.
Meantime, Mr. Rochester had again summohe ladies round him, and was seleg certain of their o be of his party. “Miss Ingram is mine, of course,” said he: afterwards he he two Misses Eshton, and Mrs. Dent. He looked at me: I happeo be near him, as I had been fastening the clasp of Mrs. Dent’s bracelet, which had got loose.
“Will you play?” he asked. I shook my head. He did not insist, which I rather feared he would have done; he allowed me to return quietly to my usual seat.
He and his aids now withdrew behind the curtain: the other party, which was headed by el Dent, sat down on the crest of chairs. One of the gentlemen, Mr. Eshton, me, seemed to propose that I should be asked to join them; but Lady Ingram instantly ived the notion.
“No,” I heard her say: “she looks too stupid for any game of the sort.”
Ere long a bell tinkled, and the curtain drew up. Within the arch, the bulky figure of Sir Gee Lynn, whom Mr. Rochester had likewise chosen, was seen enveloped in a white sheet: before him, on a table, lay open a large book; and at his side stood Amy Eshton, draped in Mr. Rochester’s cloak, and holding a book in her hand. Somebody, unseen, rang the bell merrily; then Adèle (who had insisted on being one of her guardian’s party), bounded forward, scattering rouhe tents of a basket of flowers she carried on her arm. Then appeared the magnifit figure of Miss Ingram, clad in white, a long veil on her head, and a wreath of roses round her brow; by her side walked Mr. Rochester, and together they drew he table. They k; while Mrs. Dent and Louisa Eshton, dressed also in white, took up their stations behind them. A ceremony followed, in dumb show, in which it was easy the pantomime of a marriage. At its termination, el Dent and his party sulted in whispers for two mihen the el called out—
“Bride!” Mr. Rochester bowed, and the curtain fell.
A siderable interval elapsed before it again rose. Its sed rising displayed a more elaborately prepared se than the last. The drawing-room, as I have before observed, was raised two steps above the dining-room, and oop of the upper step, placed a yard or two back within the room, appeared a large marble basin— which I reised as an or of the servatory—where it usually stood, surrounded by exotics, aed by gold fish—and whe must have been transported with some trouble, on at of its size a.
Seated on the carpet, by the side of this basin, was seen Mr. Rochester, ed in shawls, with a turban on his head. His dark eyes and swarthy skin and Paynim features suited the e exactly: he looked the very model of aern emir, a or a victim of the b. Presently advanced into view Miss Ingram. She, too, was attired in oriental fashion: a crimson scarf tied sash-like round the waist: an embroidered handkerchief knotted about her temples; her beautifully-moulded arms bare, one of them upraised i of supp a pitcher, poised gracefully on her head. Both her cast of form aure, her plexion and her general air, suggested the idea of some Israelitish princess of the patriarchal days; and such was doubtless the character she inteo represent.
She approached the basin, a over it as if to fill her pitcher; she again lifted it to her head. The personage on the well-brink now seemed to accost her; to make some request:- “She hasted, let down her pitcher on her hand, and gave him to drink.” From the bosom of his robe he then produced a casket, ope and showed magnifit bracelets and earrings; she acted astonishment and admiration; kneeling, he laid the treasure at her feet; incredulity and delight were expressed by her looks aures; the stranger fastehe bracelets on her arms and the rings in her ears. It was Eliezer and Rebecca: the camels only were wanting.
The divining party again laid their heads together: apparently they could not agree about the word or syllable the se illustrated. el Dent, their spokesman, demahe tableau of the whole;” whereupon the curtain again desded.
On its third rising only a portion of the drawing-room was disclosed; the rest being cealed by a s, hung with some sort of dark and coarse drapery. The marble basin was removed; in its place, stood a deal table and a kit chair: these objects were visible by a very dim light proceeding from a horn lantern, the wax dles being all extinguished.
Amidst this sordid se, sat a man with his ched hands resting on his knees, and his eyes bent on the ground. I knew Mr. Rochester; though the begrimed face, the disordered dress (his coat hanging loose from one arm, as if it had been almost torn from his ba a scuffle), the desperate and scowling tehe rough, bristling hair might well have disguised him. As he moved, a ked; to his wrists were attached fetters.
“Bridewell!” exclaimed el Dent, and the charade was solved.
A suffit interval having elapsed for the performers to resume their ordinary e, they re-ehe dining-room. Mr. Rochester led in Miss Ingram; she was plimenting him on his ag.
“Do you know,” said she, “that, of the three characters, I liked you in the last best? Oh, had you but lived a few years earlier, what a gallaleman-highwayman you would have made!”
“Is all the soot washed from my face?” he asked, turning it towards her.
“Alas! yes: the more’s the pity! Nothing could be more being to your plexion than that ruffian’s rouge.”
“You would like a hero of the road then?”
“An English hero of the road would be the best thing to an Italian bandit; and that could only be surpassed by a Levantine pirate.”
“Well, whatever I am, remember you are my wife; we were married an hour since, in the presence of all these witnesses.” She giggled, and her colour rose.
“Now, Dent,” tinued Mr. Rochester, “it is your turn.” And as the other party withdrew, he and his band took the vacated seats. Miss Ingram placed herself at her leader’s right hand; the other diviners filled the chairs on each side of him and her. I did not now watch the actors; I no longer waited with i for the curtain to rise; my attention was absorbed by the spectators; my eyes, erewhile fixed on the arch, were now irresistibly attracted to the semicircle of chairs. What charade el Dent and his party played, what word they chose, how they acquitted themselves, I no longer remember; but I still see the sultation which followed each se: I see Mr. Rochester turn to Miss Ingram, and Miss Ingram to him; I see her ine her head towards him, till the jetty curls almost touch his shoulder and wave against his cheek; I hear their mutual whisperings; I recall their interged glances; and something even of the feeling roused by the spectacle returns in memory at this moment.
I have told you, reader, that I had learnt to love Mr. Rochester: I could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to notice me—because I might pass hours in his presence, and he would never ourn his eyes in my dire—because I sa<cite></cite>w all his attentions appropriated by a great lady, who sed to touch me with the hem of her robes as she passed; who, if ever her dark and imperious eye fell on me by ce, would withdraw it instantly as from an objeean to merit observation. I could not unlove him, because I felt sure he would soon marry this very lady—because I read daily in her a proud security in his iions respeg her—because I witnessed hourly in him a style of courtship which, if careless and choosing rather to be sought than to seek, was yet, in its very carelessness, captivating, and in its very pride, irresistible.
There was nothing to cool or banish love in these circumstahough much to create despair. Much too, you will think, reader, to engender jealousy: if a woman, in my position, could presume to be jealous of a woman in Miss Ingram’s. But I was not jealous: or very rarely;—the nature of the pain I suffered could not be explained by that word. Miss Ingram was a mark beh jealousy: she was too inferior to excite the feeling. Pardon the seeming paradox; I mean what I say. She was very showy, but she was not genuine: she had a fine person, many brilliant attais; but her mind oor, her heart barren by nature: nothing bloomed spontaneously on that soil; no unforatural fruit delighted by its freshness. She was not good; she was ninal: she used to repeat sounding phrases from books: she never offered, nor had, an opinion of her own. She advocated a high tone of se; but she did not know the sensations of sympathy and pity; tenderness and truth were not ioo ofterayed this, by the undue vent she gave to a spiteful antipathy she had ceived against little Adèle: pushing her away with some elious epithet if she happeo approach her; sometimes her from the room, and always treating her with ess and acrimony. Other eyes besides miched these maions of character—watched them closely, keenly, shrewdly. Yes; the future bridegroom, Mr. Rochester himself, exercised over his intended a ceaseless surveillance; and it was from this sagacity—this guardedness of his—this perfect, clear sciousness of his fair one’s defects— this obvious absence of passion in his ses towards her, that my ever-t pain arose.
I saw he was going to marry her, for family, perhaps political reasons, because her rank and es suited him; I felt he had not given her his love, and that her qualifications were ill adapted to win from him that treasure. This was the point—this was where the nerve was touched and teased—this was where the fever was sustained and fed: she could not charm him.
If she had mahe victory at once, and he had yielded and sincerely laid his heart at her feet, I should have covered my face, turo the wall, and (figuratively) have died to them. If Miss Ingram had been a good and noble woman, endowed with force, fervour, kindness, sense, I should have had oal struggle with two tigers—jealousy and despair: then, my heart torn out and devoured, I should have admired her—aowledged her excellence, and been quiet for the rest of my days: and the more absolute her superiority, the deeper would have been my admiration—the more truly tranquil my quiesce. But as matters really stood, to watch Miss Ingram’s efforts at fasating Mr. Rochester, to witheir repeated failure—herself unscious that they did fail; vainly fang that each shaft launched hit the mark, and infatuatedly pluming herself on success, when her pride and self-placy repelled further and further what she wished to allure—to withis, was to be at onder ceaseless excitation and ruthless restraint.
Because, when she failed, I saw how she might have succeeded. Arrows that tinually glanced off from Mr. Rochester’s breast and fell harmless at his feet, might, I knew, if shot by a surer hand, have quivered keen in his proud heart—have called love into his stern eye, and softness into his sardonic face; or, better still, without ons a silent quest might have been won.
“Why she not influence him more, when she is privileged to draw so o him?” I asked myself. “Surely she ot truly like him, or not like him with true affe! If she did, she need not her smiles so lavishly, flash her glances so uingly, manufacture airs so elaborate, graces so multitudinous. It seems to me that she might, by merely sitting quietly at his side, saying little and looking less, get nigher his heart. I have seen in his face a far different expression from that which hardens it now while she is so vivaciously accosting him; but then it came of itself: it was not elicited by meretricious arts and calculated manoeuvres; and one had but to accept it—to answer what he asked without pretension, to address him when needful without grimad it increased and grew kinder and menial, and warmed one like a f sunbeam. How will she mao please him when they are married? I do not think she will ma; a might be managed; and his wife might, I verily believe, be the very happiest woman the sun shines on.”
I have not yet said anything natory of Mr. Rochester’s projearrying for i and es. It surprised me when I first discovered that such was his iion: I had thought him a man uo be influenced by motives so onpla his choice of a wife; but the longer I sidered the position, education, &c., of the parties, the less I felt justified in judging and blamiher him or Miss Ingram for ag in ity to ideas and principles instilled into them, doubtless, from their childhood. All their class held these principles: I supposed, then, they had reasons for holding them such as I could not fathom. It seemed to me that, were I a gentleman like him, I would take to my bosom only such a wife as I could love; but the very obviousness of the advao the husband’s oiness offered by this plan vinced me that there must be arguments against its general adoption of which I was quite ignorant: otherwise I felt sure all the world would act as I wished to act.
But in other points, as well as this, I was growing very leo my master: I was fetting all his faults, for which I had once kept a sharp look-out. It had formerly been my endeavour to study all sides of his character: to take the bad with the good; and from the just weighing of both, to form aable judgment. Now I saw no bad. The sarcasm that had repelled, the harshhat had startled me once, were only like keen ents in a choice dish: their presence u, but their absence would be felt as paratively insipid. And as for the vague something—was it a sinister or a sorrowful, a designing or a desponding expression?— that opened upon a careful observer, now and then, in his eye, and closed again before one could fathom the strange depth partially disclosed; that something which used to make me fear and shrink, as if I had been wandering amongst volic-looking hills, and had suddenly felt the ground quiver and seen it gape: that something, I, at intervals, beheld still; and with throbbi, but not with palsied nerves. Instead of wishing to shun, I longed only to dare—to divi; and I thought Miss Ingram happy, because one day she might look into the abyss at her leisure, explore its secrets and analyse their nature.
Meantime, while I thought only of my master and his future bride— saw only them, heard only their discourse, and sidered only their movements of importahe rest of the party were occupied with their own separate is and pleasures. The Ladies Lynn and Ingram tio sort in solemn ferences, where they heir two turbans at each other, and held up their four hands in frontiures of surprise, or mystery, or horror, acc to the theme on which their gossip ran, like a pair of magnified puppets. Mild Mrs. Dent talked with good-natured Mrs. Eshton; and the two sometimes bestowed a courteous word or smile on me. Sir Gee Lynn, el Dent, and Mr. Eshton discussed politics, or ty affairs, or justice business. Lord Ingram flirted with Amy Eshton; Louisa played and sang to and with one of the Messrs. Lynn; and Mary Ingram listened languidly to the gallant speeches of the other. Sometimes all, as with one sent, suspeheir by-play to observe and listen to the principal actors: for, after all, Mr. Rochester and—because closely ected with him—Miss Ingram were the life and soul of the party. If he was absent from the room an hour, a perceptible dulness seemed to steal over the spirits of his guests; and his re-entrance was sure to give a fresh impulse to the vivacity of versation.
The want of his animating influence appeared to be peculiarly felt one day that he had been summoo Millcote on business, and was not likely to return till late. The afternoon was wet: a walk the party had proposed to ta<big></big>ke to see a gipsy camp, lately pitched on a on beyond Hay, was sequently deferred. Some of the gentlemen were goo the stables: the younger oogether with the younger ladies, were playing billiards in the billiard-room. The dowagers Ingram and Lynn sought sola a quiet game at cards. Blanche Ingram, after having repelled, by supercilious taciturnity, some efforts of Mrs. Dent and Mrs. Eshton to draw her into versation, had first murmured over some seal tunes and airs on the piano, and then, haviched a novel from the library, had flung herself in haughty listlessness on a sofa, and prepared to beguile, by the spell of fi, the tedious hours of absehe room and the house were silent: only now and then the merriment of the billiard-players was heard from above.
It was verging on dusk, and the clock had already given warning of the hour to dress for dinner, when little Adèle, who k by me in the drawing-room window-seat, suddenly exclaimed—
“Voile, Monsieur Rochester, qui revient!”
I turned, and Miss Ingram darted forwards from her sofa: the others, too, looked up from their several occupations; for at the same time a g of wheels and a splashing tramp of horse-hoofs became audible o gravel. A post-chaise roag.
“What possess him to e home in that style?” said Miss Ingram. “He rode Mesrour (the black horse), did he not, when he went out? and Pilot was with him:- what has he doh the animals?”
As she said this, she approached her tall person and ample garments so he window, that I was obliged to bend back almost to the breaking of my spine: in her eagerness she<mark>藏书网</mark> did not observe me at first, but when she did, she curled her lip and moved to another casement. The post-chaise stopped; the driver rang the door-bell, and a gentleman alighted attired in travelling garb; but it was not Mr. Rochester; it was a tall, fashionable-looking man, a stranger.
“How provoking!” exclaimed Miss Ingram: “you tiresome monkey!” (apostrophising Adèle), “who perched you up in the window to give false intelligence?” and she cast on me an angry glance, as if I were in fault.
Some parleying was audible in the hall, and soon the new-er entered. He bowed to Lady Ingram, as deemihe eldest lady present.
“It appears I e at an inopportuime, madam,” said he, “when my friend, Mr. Rochester, is from home; but I arrive from a very long journey, and I think I may presume so far on old and intimate acquaintance as to instal myself here till he returns.”
His manner olite; his at, in speaking, struck me as being somewhat unusual,—not precisely fn, but still not altogether English: his age might be about Mr. Rochester’s,—between thirty and forty; his plexion was singularly sallow: otherwise he was a fine-looking man, at first sight especially. On closer examination, you detected something in his face that displeased, or rather that failed to please. His features were regular, but too relaxed: his eye was large and well cut, but the life looking out of it was a tame, vat life—at least so I thought.
The sound of the dressing-bell dispersed the party. It was not till after dihat I saw him agaihen seemed quite at his ease. But I liked his physiognomy evehan before: it struck me as being at the same time uled and inanimate. His eye wandered, and had no meaning in its wandering: this gave him an odd look, such as I never remembered to have seen. For a handsome and not an unamiable-looking man, he repelled me exceedingly: there was no power in that smooth-skinned face of a full oval shape: no firmness in that aquiline nose and small cherry mouth; there was no thought on the low, even forehead; no and in that blank, brown eye.
As I sat in my usual nook, and looked at him with the light of the girandoles on the mantelpiece beaming full over him—for he occupied an arm-chair drawn close to the fire, a shrinking still nearer, as if he were cold, I pared him with Mr. Rochester. I think (with deference be it spoken) the trast could not be much greater between a sleek gander and a fierce fal: between a meek sheep and the rough-coated keen-eyed dog, its guardian.
He had spoken of Mr. Rochester as an old friend. A curious friendship theirs must have been: a pointed illustration, indeed, of the old adage that “extremes meet.”
Two or three of the gentlemen sat near him, and I caught at times scraps of their versation across the room. At first I could not make much sense of what I heard; for the discourse of Louisa Eshton and Mary Ingram, who sat o me, fused the fragmentary sentehat reached me at intervals. These last were discussing the strahey both called him “a beautiful man.” Louisa said he was “a love of a creature,” and she “adored him;” and Mary instanced his “pretty little mouth, and niose,” as her ideal of the charming.
“And what a sweet-tempered forehead he has!” cried Louisa,—“so smooth—none of those frowning irregularities I dislike so much; and such a placid eye and smile!”
And then, to my great relief, Mr. Henry Lynn summohem to the other side of the room, to settle some point about the deferred excursion to Hay on.
I was now able to trate my attention on the group by the fire, and I presently gathered that the new-er was called Mr. Mason; then I learhat he was but just arrived in England, and that he came from some hot try: which was the reason, doubtless, his face was so sallow, and that he sat so he hearth, and wore a surtout in the house. Presently the words Jamaica, Kingston, Spanish Town, indicated the West Indies as his residence; and it was with no little surprise I gathered, ere long, that he had there first seen and bee acquainted with Mr. Rochester. He spoke of his friend’s dislike of the burnis, the hurries, and rainy seasons of that region. I knew Mr. Rochester had been a traveller: Mrs. Fairfax had said so; but I thought the ti of Europe had bounded his wanderings; till now I had never heard a hint given of visits to more distant shores.
I these things, when an i, and a somewhat ued one, broke the thread of my musings. Mr. Mason, shivering as some one ced to open the door, asked for more coal to be put on the fire, which had burnt out its flame, though its mass of der still sho ahe footman whht the coal, in going out, stopped near Mr. Eshton’s chair, and said something to him in a low voice, of which I heard only the words, “old woman,”—“quite troublesome.”
“Tell her she shall be put iocks if she does not take herself off,” replied the magistrate.
“No—stop!” interrupted el Dent. “Don’t send her away, Eshton; we might turhing to at; better sult the ladies.” And speaking aloud, he tinued—“Ladies, you talked of going to Hay on to visit the gipsy camp; Sam here says that one of the old Mother Bunches is in the servants’ hall at this moment, and insists upon being brought in before ‘the quality,’ to tell them their fortunes. Would you like to see her?”
“Surely, el,” cried Lady Ingram, “you would not ence such a low impostor? Dismiss her, by all means, at once!”
“But I ot persuade her to go away, my lady,” said the footman; “nor any of the servants: Mrs. Fairfax is with her just now, eio be gone; but she has taken a chair in the ey- er, and says nothing shall stir her from it till she gets leave to e in here.”
“What does she want?” asked Mrs. Eshton.
“‘To tell the gentry their fortunes,’ she says, ma’am; and she swears she must and will do it.”
“What is she like?” inquired the Misses Eshton, in a breath.
“A shogly ugly old creature, miss; almost as black as a crock.”
“Why, she’s a real sorceress!” cried Frederick Lynn. “Let us have her in, of course.”
“To be sure,” rejoined his brother; “it would be a thousand pities to throw away such a ce of fun.”
“My dear boys, what are you thinking about?” exclaimed Mrs. Lynn.
“I ot possibly tenany susistent proceeding,” chimed in the Dowager Ingram.
“Indeed, mama, but you —and will,” pronouhe haughty voice of Blanche, as she turned round on the piano-stool; where till now she had sat silent, apparently examining sundry sheets of music. “I have a curiosity to hear my fortuold: therefore, Sam, order the beldame forward.”
“My darling Blanche! recollect—”
“I do—I recollect all you suggest; and I must have my will— quick, Sam!”
“Yes—yes—yes!” cried all the juveniles, both ladies alemen. “Let her e—it will be excellent sport!”
The footman still lingered. “She looks such a rough one,” said he.
“Go!” ejaculated Miss Ingram, and the ma.
Excitement instantly seized the whole party: a running fire of raillery as roceeding when Sam returned.
“She won’t e now,” said he. “She says it’s not her mission to appear before the ‘vulgar herd’ (them’s her words). I must show her into a room by herself, and then those who wish to sult her must go to her one by one.”
“You see now, my queenly Blanche,” began Lady Ingram, “she encroaches. Be advised, my angel girl—and—”
“Show her into the library, of course,” cut in the “angel girl.” “It is not my mission to listen to her before the vulgar herd either: I mean to have her all to myself. Is there a fire in the library?”
“Yes, ma’am—but she looks such a tinkler.”
“Cease that chatter, blockhead! and do my bidding.”
Again Sam vanished; and mystery, animation, expectation rose to full flow once more.
“She’s ready now,” said the footman, as he reappeared. “She wishes to knoill be her first visitor.”
“I think I had better just look in upon her before any of the ladies go,” said el Dent.
“Tell her, Sam, a gentleman is ing.”
Sam went aurned.
“She says, sir, that she’ll have lemen; they need not trouble themselves to e near her; nor,” he added, with difficulty suppressing a titter, “any ladies either, except the young, and single.”
“By Jove, she has taste!” exclaimed Henry Lynn.
Miss Ingram rose solemnly: “I go first,” she said, in a tone which might have befitted the leader of a forlorn hope, mounting a brea the van of his men.
“Oh, my best! oh, my dearest! pause—reflect!” was her mama’s cry; but she swept past her in stately silence, passed through the door which el Dent held open, and we heard her ehe library.
A parative silensued. Lady Ingram thought it “le cas” t her hands: which she did accly. Miss Mary declared she felt, for her part, she never dared venture. Amy and Louisa Eshton tittered uheir breath, and looked a little frightened.
The minutes passed very slowly: fifteen were ted before the library-dain opened. Miss Ingram returo us through the arch.
Would she laugh? Would she take it as a joke? All eyes met her with a glance of eager curiosity, and she met all eyes with one of rebuff and ess; she looked her flurried nor merry: she walked stiffly to her seat, and took it in silence.
“Well, Blanche?” said Lord Ingram.
“What did she say, sister?” asked Mary.
“What did you think? How do you feel?—Is she a real fortueller?” demahe Misses Eshton.
“Now, now, good people,” returned Miss Ingram, “don’t press upon me. Really yans of wonder and credulity are easily excited: you seem, by the importance of you all—my good mama included—ascribe to this matter, absolutely to believe we have a ge the house, who is in close alliah the old gentleman. I have seen a gipsy vagabond; she has practised in haeyed fashion the sce of palmistry and told me what such people usually tell. My whim is gratified; and now I think Mr. Eshton will do well to put the hag iocks to-morrow m, as he threatened.”
Miss Ingram took a book, leant ba her chair, and so deed further versation. I watched her for nearly half-an-hour: during all that time she urned a page, and her face grew momently darker, more dissatisfied, and more sourly expressive of disappoi. She had obviously not heard anything to her advantage: and it seemed to me, from her prolonged fit of gloom and taciturnity, that she herself, notwithstanding her professed indifferetached undue importao whatever revelations had been made her.
Meantime, Mary Ingram, Amy and Louisa Eshton, declared they dared not go alone; ahey all wished to go. A iation ehrough the medium of the ambassador, Sam; and after much pag to and fro, till, I think, the said Sam’s calves must have ached with the exercise, permission was at last, with great difficulty, extorted from the rigorous Sibyl, for the three to wait upon her in a body.
Their visit was not so still as Miss Ingram’s had been: we heard hysterical giggling and little shrieks proceeding from the library; and at the end of about twenty mihey burst the door open, and came running across the hall, as if they were half-scared out of their wits.
“I am sure she is something nht!” they cried, one and all. “She told us such things! She knows all about us!” and they sank breathless into the various seats the gentlemen haste them.
Pressed for further explanation, they declared she had told them of things they had said and done when they were mere children; described books and ors they had in their boudoirs at home: keepsakes that differeions had preseo them. They affirmed that she had even diviheir thoughts, and had whispered in the ear of each the name of the person she liked best in the world, and informed them of what they most wished for.
Here the gentlemen interposed with ear petitions to be further enlightened owo last-named points; but they got only blushes, ejaculations, tremors, and titters, iurn for their importunity. The matrons, meantime, offered vinaigrettes and wielded fans; and again and agaierated the expression of their that their warning had not been taken in time; and the elder gentlemen laughed, and the younger urged their services on the agitated fair ones.
In the midst of the tumult, and while my eyes and ears were fully engaged in the se before me, I heard a hem close at my elbow: I turned, and saw Sam.
“If you please, miss, the gipsy declares that there is another young single lady in the room who has not been to her yet, and she swears she will not go till she has seen all. I thought it must be you: there is no one else for it. What shall I tell her?”
“Oh, I will go by all means,” I answered: and I was glad of the ued opportunity to gratify my much-excited curiosity. I slipped out of the room, unobserved by any eye—for the pany were gathered in one mass about the trembling trio just returned—and I closed the door quietly behind me.
“If you like, miss,” said Sam, “I’ll wait in the hall for you; and if she frightens you, just call and I’ll e in.”
“No, Sam, return to the kit: I am not in the least afraid.” Nor was I; but I was a good deal ied aed.
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