Part 7 (2/2)
So she dismissed the matter from her mind, remembering it only from time to time when she was making her new household arrangements, and carefully planning to keep Milly out of every possible danger.
But dangers are oftener from within than from without. While Lettice walked homeward after her talk with Mrs. Budworth, Milly Harrington had locked herself into her own room, and was experimenting with her pretty curling hair before the looking-gla.s.s. She wanted to see herself with a ”fringe”--a thing that was strictly forbidden at the Rectory, and she had brushed the soft little curls that were generally hidden beneath her cap well over her forehead. Then she stood and gazed at the reflection of the fair locks, the large blue eyes, the graceful neck and shoulders.
”I suppose I look pretty,” she was saying to herself. ”I've been told so often enough. Mr. Sydney thought so when he was here at Christmas, I'm sure of that. This time, of course, he was so taken up with his father's death, and other things, that he never noticed me. But I shall see him again.”
A faint color mantled in her cheeks, and her eyes began to sparkle.
”Beauty's a great power, I've heard,” she said to herself, still looking at that fair image in the gla.s.s. ”There's no knowing what I mayn't do if I meet the right person. And one meets n.o.body in Angleford. In London--things may be different.”
Different, indeed, but not as poor Milly fancied the difference.
And then she brushed back her curls, and fastened up her black dress, and tied a clean muslin ap.r.o.n round her trim little figure before going downstairs; and when she brought in the tea-tray that afternoon, Lettice looked at her with pleasure and admiration, and thought how sweet and good a girl she was, and how she had won the Prayer-Book prize at the Diocesan Inspector's examination, and of the praise that the rector had given her for her well-written papers at the Confirmation Cla.s.s, and of her own kindly and earnest teaching of all things that were good in Lettice's eyes; and she decided that Mrs. Harrington and Mrs. Budworth were mere croakers, and that poor Milly would never come to harm.
BOOK II.
CHANGE.
”Yet the twin habit of that early time Lingered for long about the heart and tongue; We had been natives of one happy clime, And its dear accent to our utterance clung.
”Till the dire years whose awful name is Change Had grasped our souls, still yearning in divorce, And pitiless shaped them in two forms that range-- Two elements which sever their life's course.”
George Eliot.
CHAPTER VI.
NEW BEGINNINGS.
”Poor dear Lettice! how she must have suffered!” said Clara Graham.
”Less than you suppose,” rejoined her husband.
”Jim, what do you mean? You are very hard-hearted.”
”No, I'm not! I'm only practical. Your friend, Miss Campion, has been a source of lamentation and woe to you ever since I made your acquaintance. According to you, she was always being sacrificed to that intolerable prig of a brother of hers. _Then_ she was immolated on the altar of her father's money difficulties and her mother's ill-health.
Now she has got a fair field, and can live where she likes and exercise her talents as she pleases; and as I can be as unfeeling as I like in the bosom of my family, I will at once acknowledge that I am very glad the old man's gone.”
”I do hope and trust, Jim----”
”That I am not a born fool, my dear?”
”--That you won't say these things to Lettice herself.”
”Exactly. That is what I knew you were going to say.”
”If it weren't that I am certain you do not mean half you say----”
”I mean all that I say: every word of it. But I'll tell you what, Clara: I believe that Lettice Campion is a woman of great talent--possibly even of genius--and that she has never yet been able to give her talents full play. She has the chance now, and I hope she'll use it.”
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