Part 20 (1/2)
”You can behave like a naughty, troublesome girl, without any proper feeling, of course!--if you choose,” said Lady Fox-Wilton warmly. ”But I trust you will do nothing of the kind. We are your guardians till you are twenty-one; and you ought to be guided by us.”
”Well, of course I can't be engaged to Stephen, if you say I mayn't--because there's Stephen to back you up. But if Queen Victoria could be a queen at eighteen, I don't see why _I_ shouldn't be fit at eighteen to manage my own wretched affairs! Anyway--I--am--not--going to Paris--unless I want to go. So I don't advise you to promise that lady just yet. If she keeps her room empty, you might have to pay for it!”
”Hester, you are really the plague of my life!” cried Lady Fox-Wilton helplessly. ”I try to keep you--the Rector tries to keep you--out of mischief that any girl ought to be ashamed--of--and--”
”What mischief?” demanded Hester peremptorily. ”Don't run into generalities, mamma.”
”You know very well what mischief I mean!”
”I know that you think I shall be running away some day with Sir Philip Meryon!” said the girl, laughing, but with a fierce gleam in her eyes. ”I have no intention at present of doing anything of the kind. But if anything could make me do it, it would be the foolish way in which you and the others behave. I don't believe the Rector ever told you to set Sarah and Lulu on to dog me wherever I go!”
”He told me you were not to be allowed to meet that man. You won't promise me not to meet him--and what can we do? You know what the Rector feels. You know that he spent an hour yesterday arguing and pleading with you, when he had been up most of the night preparing papers for this commission. What's the matter with you, Hester? Are you quite in your right senses?”
The girl had clasped her hands behind her back, and stood with one foot forward, ”on tiptoe for a flight,” her young figure and radiant look expressing the hot will which possessed her. At the mention of Meynell's name she clearly hesitated, a frown crossed her eyes, her lip twitched.
Then she said with vehemence:
”Who asked him to spend all that time? Not I. Let him leave me alone. He does not care twopence about me, and it's mere humbug and hypocrisy all his pretending to care.”
”And your Aunt Alice--who's always wors.h.i.+pped you? Why, she's just miserable about you!”
”She says exactly what you and Uncle Richard tell her to say--she always has! Well, I don't know about Paris, mamma--I'll think about it. If you and Sarah will just let me be, I'll take Roddy for a stroll, and then after tea I'll tell you what I'll do.” And, turning, she beckoned to a fine collie lazily sunning himself on the drawing-room steps, and he sprang up, gambolling about her.
”Promise you won't meet that man!” said Lady Fox-Wilton, in agitation.
”I believe he went up to Scotland to-day,” said Hester, laughing. ”I haven't the smallest intention of meeting him. Come, Roddy!”
The eyes of the two met--in those of the older woman, impatience, a kind of cold exasperation; in Hester's, defiance. It was a strange look to pa.s.s between a mother and daughter. Hester turned away, and then paused:
”Oh, by the way, mamma--where are you going?”
Lady Fox-Wilton hesitated unaccountedly.
”Why do you ask?”
Hester opened her eyes.
”Why shouldn't I? Is it a secret? I wanted you to tell Aunt Alice something if you were going that way.”
”Mamma!”
Sarah suddenly emerged from the schoolroom window and ran excitedly across the lawn toward her mother. ”Have you heard this extraordinary story about John Broad's mother? Tibbald has just told me.”
Tibbald was the butler, and Sarah's special friend and crony.
”What story? I wish you wouldn't allow Tibbald to gossip as you do, Sarah!” said Lady Fox-Wilton angrily. But a close observer might have seen that her bright colour precipitately left her.
”Why, what harm was it?” cried Sarah, wondering. ”He told me, because it seems Mrs. Sabin used to be a servant of ours long ago. Do you remember her, mamma?”
Again Lady Fox-Wilton stumbled perceptibly in replying. She turned away, and, with the garden scissors at her waist, she began vaguely to clip off some dead roses from some bushes near her.
”We once had a maid--for a very short time,” she said over her shoulder, ”who married some one of that name. What about her?”