'No, my lady.'
'Then how did you know the creature was in the curtain?'
For the first time since he had entered the room the groom looked a little confused.
'It's a sort of presumption for a man in my position to be subject to a nervous infirmity,' he answered. 'I am one of those persons (the weakness is not uncommon, as your ladyship is aware) who know by their own unpleasant sensations when a cat is in the room. It goes a little further than that with me. The 'antipathy,' as the gentlefolks call it, tells me in what part of the room the cat is.'
My aunt turned to her husband, without attempting to conceal that she took no sort of interest in the groom's antipathies.
'Haven't you done with the man yet?' she asked.
The General gave the groom his dismissal.
'You shall hear from me in three days' time. Good-morning.'
Michael Bloomfield seemed to have noticed my aunt's ungracious manner. He looked at her for a moment with steady attention before he left the room.
V.
'You don't mean to engage that man?' said Lady Claudia as the door closed.
'Why not?' asked my uncle.
'I have taken a dislike to him.'
This short answer was so entirely out of the character of my aunt that the General took her kindly by the hand, and said:
'I am afraid you are not well.'
She irritably withdrew her hand.
'I don't feel well. It doesn't matter.'
'It does matter, Claudia. What can I do for you?'
'Write to the man—' She paused and smiled contemptuously. 'Imagine a groom with an antipathy to cats!' she said, turning to me. 'I don't know what you think, Mina. I have a strong objection, myself, to servants who hold themselves above their position in life. Write,' she resumed, addressing her husband, 'and tell him to look for another place.'
'What objection can I make to him?' the General asked, helplessly.
'Good heavens! can't you make an excuse? Say he is too young.'
My uncle looked at me in expressive silence—walked slowly to the writing-table—and glanced at his wife, in the faint hope that she might change her mind. Their eyes met—and she seemed to recover the command of her temper. She put her hand caressingly on the General's shoulder.
'I remember the time,' she said, softly, 'when any caprice of mine was a command to you. Ah, I was younger then!'
The General's reception of this little advance was thoroughly characteristic of him. He first kissed Lady Claudia's hand, and then he wrote the letter. My aunt rewarded him by a look, and left the library.
'What the deuce is the matter with her?' my uncle said to me when we were alone. 'Do you dislike the man, too?'
'Certainly not. As far as I can judge, he appears to be just the sort of person we want.'
'And knows thoroughly well how to manage horses, my dear. What
As the words passed his lips Lady Claudia opened the library door.
'I am so ashamed of myself,' she said, sweetly. 'At my age, I have been behaving like a spoiled child. How good you are to me, General! Let me try to make amends for my misconduct. Will you permit me?'
She took up the General's letter, without waiting for permission; tore it to pieces, smiling pleasantly all the while; and threw the fragments into the waste-paper basket. 'As if you didn't know better than I do!' she said, kissing him on the forehead. 'Engage the man by all means.'
She left the room for the second time. For the second time my uncle looked at me in blank perplexity—and I looked back at him in the same condition of mind. The sound of the luncheon bell was equally a relief to both of us. Not a word more was spoken on the subject of the new groom. His references were verified; and he entered the General's service in three days' time.
VI.
ALWAYS careful in anything that concerned my welfare, no matter how trifling it might be, my uncle did not trust me alone with the new groom when he first entered our service. Two old friends of the General accompanied me at his special request, and reported the man to be perfectly competent and trustworthy. After that, Michael rode out with me alone; my friends among young ladies seldom caring to accompany me, when I abandoned the park for the quiet country roads on the north and west of London. Was it wrong in me to talk to him on these expeditions? It would surely have been treating a man like a brute never to take the smallest notice of him—especially as his conduct was uniformly respectful toward me. Not once, by word or look, did he presume on the position which my favor permitted him to occupy.
Ought I to blush when I confess (though he was only a groom) that he interested me?
In the first place, there was something romantic in the very blankness of the story of his life.
He had been left, in his infancy, in the stables of a gentleman living in Kent, near the highroad between
