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“Not very wonderful,” said Lady Tyrrell, laughing. “I suppose there is a charming reciprocity of feeling.”
“I think I can afford to pity her,” said Mrs. Duncombe, lightly. “Just fancy what I must have been to her! You know I was brought up in a convent at Paris. The very bosom of the scarlet woman.”
“But,” interrupted Cecil, “you were never a Roman Catholic, Bessie!”
“Oh dear, no; the Protestant boarders were let entirely alone. There were only two of us, and we lay in bed while the others went to mass, and played while they went to confession, that was all. I was an orphan; never remember my mother, and my father died abroad. Luckily for me, Bob was done for by my first ball. Very odd he should have liked a little red-haired thing like me; but every one is ticketed, I believe. My uncle was glad enough to get rid of me, and poor old Mrs. Duncombe was unsuspecting till we went home—and then!”
“And then?”
“Cecil may have some faint idea.”
“Of what you underwent?”
“She wanted to begin on me as if I were a wild savage heathen, you know! I believe she nearly had a fit when I declined a prayer-meeting, and as to my walking out with Bob on Sunday evening!”
“Did she make you learn Watts’s hymns?”
“No! but she did what was much worse to poor Bob. She told him she had spent the time in prayer and humiliation, and the poor fellow very nearly cried.”
“Ah, those mothers have such an advantage over their sons,” said Lady Tyrrell.
“I determined I would never go near her again after that,” said Mrs. Duncombe. “Bob goes; he is really fond of her; but I knew we should keep the peace better apart. I let her have the children now and then, when it is convenient, and oddly enough they like it; but I shall soon have to stop that, for I won’t have them think me a reprobate; and she has thought me ten times worse ever since I found out that I had brains and could use them.”
“Quite true,” said Camilla; “there’s no peacemaker like absence.”
“The only pity is that Swanslea is no further off,” returned Bessie.
And so it was that Cecil, backed by her two counsellors, held her purpose, and Raymond sadly spoke of the plan of separation to Julius. Both thought Mrs. Poynsett’s own plan the best, though they could not bear the idea of her leaving her own house. Raymond was much displeased.
“At least,” he said, “there is a reprieve till this frantic fortnight is over. I envy your exemption from the turmoil.”
“I wish you would exempt yourself from the races,” said Julius. “The mischief they have done in these villages is incalculable! The very men-servants are solicited to put into sweepstakes, whenever they go into Wil’sbro’; and only this morning Mrs. Hornblower has been to me about her son.”
“I thought he was the great feather in Herbert Bowater’s cap.”
“Showing the direction of the wind only too well. Since Herbert has been infected with the general insanity, poor Harry Hornblower has lapsed into his old ways, and is always hanging about the ‘Three Pigeons’ with some of the swarm of locusts who have come down already to brawl round the training stables. This has come to Truelove’s ears, and he has notice of dismissal. At the mother’s desire I spoke to Truelove, but he told me that at last year’s races the lad had gambled at a great rate, and had only been saved from dishonesty by detection in time. He was so penitent that Truelove gave him another trial, on condition that he kept out of temptation; but now he has gone back to it, Mr. Truelove thinks it the only way of saving him from some fresh act of dishonesty. ‘It is all up with them,’ he says, ‘when once they take that turn.’”
“You need not speak as if I were accountable for all the blackguardism.”
“Every man is accountable who lends his name and position to bolster up a field of vice.”
“Come, come, Julius. Remember what men have been on the turf.”
“If those men had withheld their support, fashion would not have led so many to their ruin.”
“Hundreds are present without damage. It is a hearty out-of-doors country amusement, and one of the few general holidays that bring all ranks together.”
“You speak of racing as it has been or might be in some golden age,” said Julius. “Of course there is no harm in trying one horse’s speed against another; but look at the facts and say whether it is right to support an amusement that becomes such an occasion of evil.”
“Because a set of rascals choose to bring their villainies there you would have the sport of the whole neighbourhood given up. ‘No cakes and ale’ with a vengeance!”
“The cakes and ale that make a brother offend ought to be given up.”
“That sentences all public amusements.”
“Not necessarily. The question is of degree. Other amusements may have evil incidentally connected with them, and may lead to temptation, but it is not their chief excitement. The play or the opera is the prime interest, and often a refined and elevated one, but at races the whole excitement depends upon the horses, and is so fictitious that it needs to be enhanced by this betting system. No better faculty is called into play. Some few men may understand the merits of the horse; many more, and most of the ladies, simply like the meeting in numbers; but there is no higher faculty called out, and in many cases the whole attraction is the gambling, and the fouler wickedness in the background.”
“Which would be ten thousand times worse if all gentlemen stood aloof.”
“What good do these gentlemen do beyond keeping the contest honourable and the betting in which they are concerned? Do not they make themselves decoys to the young men on the border-land who would stay away if the turf were left to the mere vulgar? Why should they not leave it to drop like bull-baiting or cock-fighting?”
“Well done, Julius!” said Raymond. “You will head a clerical crusade against the turf, but I do not think it just to compare it with those ferocious sports which were demoralizing in themselves; while this is to large numbers simply a harmless holiday and excuse for an outing, not to speak of the benefit to the breed of horses.”
“I do not say that all competitions of speed are necessarily wrong, but I do say that the present way of managing races makes them so mischievous that no one ought to encourage them.”
“I wonder what Backsworth and Wil’sbro’ would say to you! It is their great harvest. Lodgings for those three days pay a quarter’s rent; and where so many interests are concerned, a custom cannot lightly be dropped.”
“Well,” said Raymond with a sigh, “it is not pleasure that takes me. I shall look on with impartial eyes, if that is what you wish.”
Poor Raymond! it was plain that he had little liking for anything that autumn. He rode over to Swanslea with Cecil, and when he said it was six miles off, she called it four; what he termed bare, marshy, and dreary, was in her eyes open and free; his swamp was her lake; and she ran about discovering charms and capabilities where he saw nothing but damp and dry rot, and, above all, banishment.
Would she have her will? Clio would have thought her lecture had taken effect, and mayhap, it added something to the general temper of self-assertion, but in fact Cecil had little time to think, so thickly did gaieties and preparations crowd upon her. It was the full glory and importance of the Member’s wife, her favourite ideal, but all the time her satisfaction was marred by secret heartache as she saw how wearily and formally her husband dragged through whatever fell to his lot, saw how jaded and depressed he looked, and heard him laugh his company laugh without any heart in it. She thought it all his mother’s fault, and meant to make up for everything when she had him to herself.
Julius had his troubles. When Rosamond found that races were what she called his pet aversion, she resisted with all her might. Her home associations were all on fire again. She would not condemn the pleasures she had shared with her parents, by abstinence from them, any more than she would deviate from Lady Rathforlane’s nursery management to please Mrs. Poynsett and Susan. A bonnet, which Julius trusted never to see in church, was purchased in the face of his remark that every woman who carried her gay attire to the stand made herself an additional feather on the hook of evil. At first she laughed, and then grew tearfully passionate in protests that nothing should induce her to let her brothers see what their own father did turned into a crime; and if they went without her to take care of them, and fell into mischief, whose fault would that be?
It was vain to hint that Tom was gone back to school, and Terry cared more for the Olympic dust than that of Backsworth. She had persuaded herself that his absence would be high treason to her father, whom she respected far more at a distance than when she had been struggling with his ramshackle, easy-going ways. Even now, she was remonstrating with him about poor Terry’s present misery. His last half year had been spent under the head-master, who had cultivated his historical and poetical intelligence, whereas Mr. Driver was nothing but an able crammer; and the moment the lad became interested and diverged from routine, he was choked off because such things would not ‘tell.’ If the ‘coach’ had any enthusiasm it was for mathematics, and thitherwards Terry’s brain was undeveloped. With misplaced ingenuity, he argued that sums came right by chance and that Euclid was best learnt by heart, for ‘the pictures’ simply confused him; and when Julius, amazed at finding so clever a boy in the novel position of dunce, tried to find out what he did know of arithmetic, his ignorance and inappreciation were so unfathomable that Julius doubted whether the power or the will was at fault. At any rate he was wretched in the present, and dismal as to the future, and looked on his brother-in-law as in league with the oppressors for trying to rouse his sense of duty.
Remonstrance seemed blunted and ineffective everywhere. When Herbert Bowater tried to reclaim Harry Hornblower into giving up his notorious comrades, he received the dogged reply, “Why should not a chap take his pleasure as well as you?” With the authority at once of clergyman and squire’s son, he said, “Harry, you forget yourself. I am not going to discuss my occupations with you.”
“You know better,” rudely interrupted the lad. “Racketing about all over the country, and coming home late at night. You’d best not speak of other folks!”
As a matter of fact, Herbert had never been later than was required by a walk home from a dinner, or a very moderate cricket supper; and his conscience was clear as to the quality of his amusements; but instead of, as hitherto, speaking as youth to youth, he used the language of the minister to the insulting parishioner. “I am sorry I have disturbed Mrs. Hornblower, but the case is not parallel. Innocent amusement is one thing—it is quite another to run into haunts that have already proved dangerous to your principles.”
Harry Hornblower laughed. “It’s no go coming the parson over me, Mr. Bowater! It’s well known what black coats are, and how they never cry out so loud upon other folks as when they’ve had a jolly lark among themselves. No concealment now, we’re up to a thing or two, and parsons, and capitalists, and squires will have to look sharp.”
This oration, smacking of ‘The Three Pigeons,’ was delivered so loud as to bring the mother on the scene. “O, Harry, Harry, you aren’t never speaking like that to Mr. Bowater!”
“When folks jaw me about what’s nothing to them I always give them as good as they bring. That’s my principle,” said Harry, flinging out of the house, while the curate tried to console the weeping mother, and soon after betook himself to his Rector with no mild comments on the lad’s insolence.
“Another warning how needful it is for us to avoid all occasion for misconstruction,” said Julius.
“We do, all of us,” said Herbert. “Even that wretched decoction, Fuller, and that mere dictionary, Driver, never gave cause for imputations like these. What has the fellow got hold of?”
“Stories of the last century ‘two-bottle men,’” said Julius, “trumped up by unionists now against us in these days. The truth is that the world triumphs and boasts whenever it catches the ministry on its own ground. Its ideal is as exacting as the saintly one.”
“I say Rector,” exclaimed the curate, after due pause, “you’ll be at Evensong on Saturday? The ladies at Sirenwood want me to go to Backsworth with them to hear the band.”
“Cannot young Strangeways take care of his sisters?”
“I would not ask it, sir, but they have set their heart on seeing Rood House, and want me to go with them because of knowing Dr. Easterby. Then I’m to dine with them, and that’s the very last of it for me. There’s no more croquet after this week.”
“I am thankful to hear it,” said Julius, suppressing his distaste that the man he most reverenced, and the place which was his haven of rest, should be a mere lion for Bee and Conny, a slight pastime before the regimental band!
CHAPTER XXIII
The Apple of Ate
Oh mirror, mirror on the wall,
Who is the fairest of us all?
—The Three Bears
“I do really think Terry has found the secret of happiness, for a little while at least,” said Rosamond, entering Mrs. Poynsett’s room. “That funny little man in the loan museum has asked him to help in the arrangement.”
“Who is it?”
“The little watchmaker, or watch cobbler, in the old curiosity shop.”
“Yes; Terry calls him a descendant of the Genoese Frescobaldi, and I’m sure his black eyes were never made for an English head. Terry has always haunted those uncanny wares of his, and has pursued them to the museum. ‘’Tis not every young gentleman I would wish to see there,’ says the old man, ‘but the Honourable Mr. De Lancey has the soul of an antiquarian.’”
“They say the old man is really very clever and well read.”
“He looks like an old magician, with his white cap and spectacles, and he had need to have a wand to bring order out of that awful chaos. Everybody all round has gone and cleared out their rubbish-closet. Upon my word, it looks so. There are pictures all one network of cracks, and iron caps and gauntlets out of all the halls in every stage of rust, and pots and pans and broken crocks, and baskets of coin all verdigris and tarnish!—Pah!”
“Are Miles’s birds safe?”
“Oh yes, with a swordfish’s sword and a sawfish’s saw making a trophy on the top. Terry is in the library, hunting material for a dissertation upon the ancient unicorn, which ought to conclude with the battle royal witnessed by Alice in Wonderland. The stuffed department is numerous but in a bad way as to hair, and chiefly consists of everybody’s grandmother’s old parrots and squirrels and white rats. Then, every boy, who ever had a fit of birds’ eggs or butterflies, has sent in a collection, chiefly minus the lower wings, and with volunteer specimens of moth; but luckily some give leave to do what they please with them, so the magician is making composition animals with the débris.”
“Not really!”
“I made a feeble attempt with an admiral’s wings and an orange tip, but I was scouted. About four dilapidated ones make up a proper specimen, and I can’t think how it is all to be done in the time; but really something fit to be seen is emerging. Terry is sorting the coins, a pretty job, I should say; but felicity to him. But oh! the industrial articles! There are all the regalia, carved out of cherry-stones, and a patchwork quilt of 5000 bits of silk each no bigger than a shilling. And a calculation of the middle verse in the Bible, and the longest verse, and the shortest verse, and the like edifying Scriptural researches, all copied out like flies’ legs, in writing no one can see but Julius with his spectacles off, and set in a brooch as big as the top of a thimble, all done by a one-legged sergeant of marines. So that the line might not be out done, I offered my sergeant-major’s banner-screen, but I am sorry to say they declined it, which made me jealous.”
“Are there any drawings of the Reynolds’ boy?”
“Yes, Lenore Vivian brought them down, and very good they are. Every one says he has the making of a genius, but he does not look as if it agreed with him; he is grown tall, and thin, and white, and I should not wonder if those good-for-nothing servants bullied him.”
“Did you see anything of Eleonora?”
“Nothing so impossible. I meet her every day, but she is always beset with the Strangeways, and I think she avoids me.”
“I can hardly think so.”
“I don’t like it! That man is always hanging about Sirenwood, and Lenore never stirs an inch without one of those girls. I wish Frank could see for himself, poor fellow.”
“He does hope to run down next week. I have just heard from him in high spirits. One of his seniors has come into some property, another is out of health and retires, so there is some promotion in view.”
“I wish it would make haste then. I don’t like the look of things.”
“I can hardly disbelieve in the dear girl herself; yet I do feel as if it were against nature for it to succeed. Did you hear anything of Mrs. Bowater to-day?”
“Yes, she is much better, and Edith is coming to go into the gallery with me on Tuesday when they inaugurate the Rat-house. Oh! did you hear of the debate about it? You know there’s to be a procession—all the Volunteers, and all the Odd Fellows, and all the Good Templars, and all the school-children of all denominations—whatever can walk behind a flag. Our choir boys grew emulous, and asked Herbert to ask the Rector to let them have our lovely banner with the lilies on it; but he declined, though there’s no choice but to give the holiday that will be taken.”
“Was that the debate?”
“Oh no! that was among the higher powers—where the procession should start from. The precedent was an opening that began with going to church, and having a sermon from the Bishop; but then there’s no church, and after that spur the Bishop gave them they can’t ask him without one; besides, the mayor dissents, and so do a good many more of them. So they are to meet at the Market Cross, and Mr. Fuller, in the famous black gown, supported by Mr. Driver, is to head them. I’m not sure that Julius and Herbert were not in the programme, but Mr. Truelove spoke up, and declared that Mr. Flynn the Wesleyan Methodist, and Mr. Howler the Primitive Methodist, and Mr. Riffell the Baptist, had quite as good a right to walk in the foreground and to hold forth, and Mr. Moy supported him.”
“Popularity hunting against Raymond.”
“Precisely. But Howler, Flynn, and Co. were too much for Mr. Fuller, so he seceded, and the religious ceremonies are now to be confined to his saying grace at the dinner. Raymond thinks it as well, for the inaugural speech would only have been solemn mockery; but Julius thinks it a sad beginning for the place to have no blessing because of our unhappy divisions. Isn’t that like Julius?”
“Exactly, though I see it more from Raymond’s point of view. So you are going to the dinner?”
“Oh yes. Happily my Rector has nothing to say against that, and I am sure he owes me something for keeping me out of the bazaar. In fact, having avoided the trouble, I couldn’t take the pleasure! and he must set that against the races.”
“My dear, though I am not set against races like Julius, I think, considering his strong feelings on the subject—”
“My dear Mrs. Poynsett, it would be very bad for Julius to give in to his fancies. The next thing would be to set baby up in a little hood and veil like a nun!”
Rosamond’s winsome nonsense could not but gain a smile. No doubt she was a pleasant daughter-in-law, though, for substantial care, Anne was the strength and reliance. Even Anne was much engrossed by preparations for the bazaar. It had been a great perplexity to her that the one thing she thought not worldly should be condemned by Julius, and he had not tried to prevent her from assisting Cecil, thinking, as he had told Eleonora, that the question of right and wrong was not so trenchant as to divide households.
The banquet and inauguration went off fairly well. There was nothing in it worth recording, except that Rosamond pronounced that Raymond only wanted a particle of Irish fluency to be a perfect speaker; but every one was observing how ill and depressed he looked. Even Cecil began to see it herself, and to ask Lady Tyrrell with some anxiety whether she thought him altered.
“Men always look worn after a Session,” said Lady Tyrrell.
“If this really makes him unhappy!”
“My dear Cecil, that’s the very proof of the necessity. If it makes him unhappy to go five miles away with his wife, it ought not. You should wean him from such dependence.”
Cecil had tears in her eyes as she said, “I don’t know! When I hear him sighing in his sleep, I long to give it up and tell him I will try to be happy here.”
“My dear child, don’t be weak. If you give way now, you will rue it all your life.”
“If I could have taken to his mother, I think he would have cared more for me.”
“No. The moment her jealousy was excited she would have resumed him, and you would have been the more shut out in the cold. A little firmness now, and the fresh start is before you.”
Cecil sighed, feeling that she was paying a heavy price for that fresh start, but her hands were too full for much thought. Guests came to dinner, Mrs. Poynsett kept more to her own room, and Raymond exerted himself to talk, so that the blank of the evenings was less apparent. The days were spent at the town-hall, where the stalls were raised early enough for all the ladies, their maids and footmen, to buzz about them all day, decking them out.
Mrs. Duncombe was as usual the guiding spirit, contriving all with a cleverness that made the deficiencies of her household the more remarkable. Conny and Bee Strangeways were the best workers, having plenty of experience and resource, and being ready to do anything, however hard, dusty, or disagreeable; and to drudge contentedly, with plenty of chatter indeed, but quite as freely to a female as to a male companion; whereas Miss Moy had a knot of men constantly about her, and made a noise which was a sore trial to Cecil’s heavy spirit all the first day, exclusive of the offence to her native fastidiousness. She even called upon Lady Tyrrell and Mrs. Duncombe to hold a council whether all gentlemen should not be excluded the next day, as spoiling the ladies’ work, and of no use themselves; but there were one or two who really did toil, and so well that they could not be dispensed with, and Mrs. Duncombe added that it would not do to give offence.
There was a harassed look about Mrs. Duncombe herself, for much depended on the success of her husband’s filly, Dark Hag. The Captain had hitherto been cautious, and had secured himself against heavy loss, so as to make the turf a tolerable speculation, on but the wonderful perfections of this animal had led him to stake much more on her than had been his wont; and though his wife was assured of being a rich woman in another week, she was not sorry for the multiplicity of occupations which hindered her mind from dwelling too much on the chances.
“How calm you look,—how I envy you!” she said, as she came to borrow some tape of Eleonora Vivian, who was fastening the pendent articles to the drapery of her sister’s stall. Eleonora gave a constrained smile, feeling how little truth there was in her apparent peace, wearied out as she was with the long conflict and constant distrust. She was the more anxious to be with Lady Susan, whose every word she could believe, and she finally promised to leave home with Bee and Conny the day after the ball, and to meet their mother in London. They knew there was no chance for Lorimer, but they took her on her own terms, hoping something perhaps, and at any rate glad to be a comfort to one whom they really loved, while Lady Tyrrell was delighted to promote the visit, seeing that the family did more for Lorimer’s cause than he did for himself; and in his own home who could guess the result, especially after certain other manœuvres of her ladyship had taken effect?
Lady Tyrrell did not know, nor indeed did Conny or Bee, that, though they would meet their mother in London, she would not at once go into Yorkshire with them, but would send them to their uncle’s, while she repaired to the retreat at St. Faith’s. The harass of these last few weeks, especially the endeavour to make her go to the races, had removed all scruples from Lenore’s mind as to leaving her home in ignorance of her intentions. To her mind, the circumstances of her brother’s death had made a race-course no place for any of the family, especially that of Backsworth; gout coming opportunely to disable her father in London, and one or two other little accidents, had prevented the matter from coming to an issue while she had been in London, and the avowal of her intention to keep away had filled her father with passion at her for her absurd scruples and pretences at being better than other people. It had been Lady Tyrrell who pacified him with assurances that she would soon do better; no one wished to force her conscience, and Lenore, always on the watch, began to wonder whether her sister had any reason for wishing to keep her away, and longed the more for the house of truth and peace.
So came on the bazaar day, which Mrs. Poynsett spent in solitude, except for visits from the Rectory, and one from Joanna Bowater, who looked in while Julius was sitting with her, and amused them by her account of herself as an emissary from home with ten pounds to be got rid of from her father and mother for good neighbourhood’s sake. She brought Mrs. Poynsett a beautiful bouquet, for the elderly spinsters, she said, sat on the stairs and kept up a constant supply; and she had also some exquisite Genoese wire ornaments from Cecil’s counter, and a set of studs from a tray of polished pebbles sent up from Vivian’s favourite lapidary at Rockpier. She had been amused to find the Miss Strangeways hunting over it to match that very simple-looking charm which Lena wore on to her watch, for, as she said, “the attraction must either be the simplicity of it, or the general Lena-worship in which those girls indulge.”
“How does that dear child look?”
“Fagged, I think, but so does every one, and it was not easy to keep order, Mrs. Duncombe’s counter was such a rendezvous for noisy people, and Miss Moy was perfectly dreadful, running about forcing things on people and refusing change.”
“And how is poor Anne enduring?”
“Like Christian in Vanity Fair as long as she did endure, for she retired to the spinsters on the back stairs. I offered to bring her home, and she accepted with delight, but I dropped her in the village to bestow her presents. I was determined to come on here; we go on Monday.”
“Shall you be at the Ordination?”
“I trust so. If mamma is pretty well, we shall both go.”
“Is Edith going to the ball on Thursday?”
“No, she has given it up. It seems as if we at least ought to recollect our Ember days, though I am ashamed to think we never did till this time last year.”
“I confess that I never heard of them,” said Mrs. Poynsett. “Don’t look shocked, my dear; such things were not taught in my time.”
Julius showed her the rubric and the prayer from the book in his pocket, knowing that the one endeared to her by association was one of the Prayer-books made easy by omission of all not needed at the barest Sunday service.
“I see,” she said, “it seems quite right. I wish you had told me before you were ordained, my dear.”
“You kept your Ember days for me by instinct, dear mother.”
“Don’t be too sure, Julius. One learns many things when one is laid on one’s back.”
“Think of Herbert now,” whispered Jenny. “I am glad he is sheltered from all this hubbub by being at the palace. I suppose you cannot go to the Cathedral, Julius?”
“No, Bindon will not come back till his brother’s holiday is over, nor do I even know where to write to him. Oh! here comes Anne. Now for her impressions.”
Anne had brought her little gift for Mrs. Poynsett, and displayed her presents for Glen Fraser, but as to what she had seen it made her shudder and say, “You were right, Julius, I did not know people could go on so! And with all those poor people ill close by. Miss Slater, who sat on the stairs just below me tying up flowers, is much grieved about a lad who was at work there till a fortnight ago, and now is dying of a fever, and harassed by all the rattling of the carriages.”
“What! close by! Nothing infectious, I hope?”
“The doctor called it gastric fever, but no one was to hear of it lest there should be an alarm; and it was too late to change the place of the bazaar, though it is so sad to have all that gaiety close at hand.”
If these were the impressions of Anne and Joanna early in the day, what were they later, when, in those not sustained by excitement, spirit and energy began to flag? Cecil’s counter, with her excellent and expensive wares, and her own dignified propriety, was far less popular than those where the goods were cheaper and the saleswomen less inaccessible, and she was not only disappointed at her failure, but vexed when told that the articles must be raffled for. She could not object, but it seemed an unworthy end for what had cost her so much money and pains to procure, and it was not pleasant to see Mrs. Duncombe and Miss Moy hawking the tickets about, like regular touters, nor the most beautiful things drawn by the most vulgar and tasteless people.
Miss Moy had around her a court of ‘horsey’ men who were lounging away the day before the races, and who had excited her spirits to a pitch of boisterousness such as dismayed Mrs. Duncombe herself when her attempts at repression were only laughed at.
Somehow, among these adherents, there arose a proposal for the election of a queen of beauty, each gentleman paying half-a-crown for the right of voting. Miss Moy bridled and tried to blush. She was a tall, highly-coloured, flashing-eyed brunette, to whom a triumph would be immense over the refined, statuesque, severe Miss Vivian, and an apple-blossom innocent-looking girl who was also present, and though Lady Tyrrell was incontestably the handsomest person in the room, her age and standing had probably prevented her occurring to the propounders of the scheme.
