Cousin Kate

quizzically. “Sir Timothy, I must take her up to her bedchamber! You, I see, have changed your dress, but we, I must inform you, are sadly travel-stained, and it wants but half an hour to dinner! Come, my love!”

Kate, meekly mounting the Grand Stairway in her aunt’s wake, paused on the half-landing to look back. Below her lay the Great Hall, stone-paved, and hung with tapestries. A log fire smouldered in the wide stone hearth, which was flanked by armoured figures, and surmounted by an arrangement of ancient weapons. A highly polished refectory table supported a pewter dish; an oak coffer with brass hinges and locks, burnished till they shone, stood against one wall; an oak armoire against another; several high-backed chairs, also of oak, completed the furniture; the tall windows were hung with faded tapestry; and the Grand Stairway was of black oak, uncarpeted. Kate, critically surveying the scene below her, found that her aunt was watching her, the corners of her mouth lilting upward.

“Well?” said Lady Broome. “What do you think of it?”

“It isn’t very gay, is it?” replied Kate honestly. “Or even very cosy! No, I don’t mean cosy, precisely— homelike!”

A chuckle from Sir Timothy brought her eyes to his face, a most mischievous twinkle in them. Lady Broome’s triumphant smile vanished; she put up her brows, saying: “Cosy? Homelike? Not, perhaps, to our modern notions, but the Elizabethans would have found it so, I assure you.”

“Ah, no, my love!” gently interpolated Sir Timothy. “The Elizabethans, whose taste was not to be compared with yours, would have covered the beams with paint, you know. My father had it stripped off when I was a boy.” He added, dispassionately considering the tapestries: “And the hangings must have been very bright before the colours faded, and the gold threads became tarnished. Eheu jugaces!”

“My dear Sir Timothy, how absurd you are!” said Lady Broome, with an indulgent laugh. “Don’t heed him, Kate! He delights in bantering me, because I care more for these things than he does.”

She swept on up the stairs, and across the hall to a broad gallery, down which she led Kate. Opening one of the doors which gave access to it, she said archly, over her shoulder: “Now, pray don’t tell me that you think this room unhome-like! I have taken such pains to make it pretty for you!”

“No, indeed!” exclaimed Kate, turning pink with pleasure. “I never saw a prettier room, ma’am! Thank you! A fire, too! Well, if this is the way you mean to use me you will never be rid of me! What can I do to repay so much kindness? I hope you will tell me!”

“Oh, you will find a great deal to do! But I don’t wish to be rid of you. Good evening, Ellen! This is Miss Kate, whom you are to wait upon. What have you put out for her to wear this evening?”

The young housemaid rose from her knees by Kate’s trunk, and bobbed a curtsy. “If you please, my lady, the white muslin, trimmed with a double pleating of blue ribbon,” she said nervously. “Being as it came first to hand!”

“Well, show it to me!” commanded Lady Broome, with a touch of impatience. She nodded at Kate. “A country girl! I hope you won’t find her very stupid and clumsy.” She surveyed the dress Ellen was holding up. “Yes, that will do very well. Put it down, and go and desire Sidlaw to give you the package I gave into her charge!”

“Yes, my lady!” said Ellen, curtsying herself out of the room.

“It is almost impossible to get London servants to come into the country,” remarked Lady Broome. “When we gave up the London house I did make the experiment, but it didn’t answer. They were for ever complaining that it was lonely, or that they dared not walk through the park after dark! Such nonsense! By the by, I do hope you are not nervous, my dear?”

“Oh, no, not a bit!” replied Kate cheerfully. “After all, I’m not at all likely to be snatched up by a party of guerrilleros, am I?”

“Extremely unlikely! Yes, that is the package, Ellen, but there is no need to enter the room as though you had been shot from a gun. My love, this is a shawl for you to put round your shoulders: I hope you will like it. I shall leave you now. When you are dressed, Ellen will show you the way to the Long Drawing-room.”

She moved towards the door, and paused before it, looking at Ellen with raised brows. With a gasp, the girl scurried to open it for her, curtsying yet again. Having carefully shut it, she turned, gulped, and said: “If you please, miss, I haven’t finished unpacking your trunk!”

“Well, you haven’t had time, have you? Oh, pray don’t keep on dropping curtsies! It makes me feel giddy! Have you found a pair of silk stockings yet? I think I should wear them, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes, miss!”

“I bought them yesterday,” disclosed Kate, rummaging through the trunk. “My old nurse said it was a sinful waste of money, but I thought my aunt would expect me to have at least one pair. Here they are! The first I’ve ever had!”

“Oo, aren’t they elegant?” breathed Ellen, awed.

“Well, I think so! Tell me, how much time have I before dinner?”

“Only half an hour, miss. Being as it’s half past six, and dinner’s at seven. Generally it’s at six, but my lady had it put off, in case you’d be late. If you please, miss!”

Kate laid her furs down on the bed, and began to unbutton her pelisse, glancing thoughtfully round the room. “It was very kind of her to make so many preparations for me,” she said. “Are those blinds new?”

“Yes, miss, and the bed-curtains, made to match!” said Ellen, with vicarious pride. “Such a time as we all had with them, Mrs Quedgeley, which is my lady’s sewing-woman, saying as they couldn’t be made up, not under a sennight! So we was all of us set to stitching, and Mrs Thorne—that’s the housekeeper, miss—read to us, to improve our minds.”

“Goodness! Did it improve your mind?”

“Oh, no, miss!” answered Ellen, shocked. “I didn’t understand it.”

Kate laughed, tossing her hat on to the bed, and running her fingers through her flattened curls. “My aunt must have been very sure she would bring me back with her,” she commented.

“Oh, yes, miss! Everything always has to be just as my lady says.”

Kate did not reply to this, possibly because she was trying to unfasten her dress. Seeing her in difficulties recalled Ellen to a sense of her new duties, and she hurried to her assistance, even remembering, once Kate had stepped out of the dress, to pour warm water from a brass can into the flowered basin upon the wash-stand, and to direct her attention to the soap, which, she said simply, was a cake of my lady’s own, from Warren’s, with ever such a sweet scent.

Having washed her face and hands, Kate sat down at the dressing-table, in her petticoat, and vigorously brushed her hair, threading a ribbon through it, and twisting the ringlets round her fingers. Her handmaiden, watching with great interest, said: “Lor’, miss! Is it natural?”

“Yes, quite natural!” Kate answered, amused. “Isn’t it fortunate for me? Now, if you will do up my dress for me—oh, and open the package my aunt gave me!—Good God, what a beautiful shawl! It must be Norwich silk, surely!—Where is my trinket box?” She dived into her trunk again, and dragged from its depths a small box, which she opened. After critically inspecting its contents, she selected a modest string of beads, and a posy-ring; and, having clasped the one round her throat, and slipped the other on her finger, disposed the shawl becomingly, and announced that she was now ready.

“Oh, miss, you do look a picture!” exclaimed her handmaiden involuntarily.

Heartened by this tribute, Kate drew a resolute breath, and stepped out into the corridor. She was led down it to the hall, and across this to a picture gallery, where brocade curtains shrouded no fewer than fifteen very tall windows. Wax candles flickered in a number of wall sconces, but did little to warm the gallery. Kate drew the shawl more closely about her shoulders, and was reminded of a draughty chateau near Toulouse, where she and her father had had the ill-fortune to be billeted for several weeks.

“This is the anteroom, miss!” whispered Ellen, opening a door, and walking across the room on tiptoe to where heavy curtains veiled an archway. She pulled one back a little way, signifying, with a jerk of her head and a frightened grimace, that Kate was to pass through the archway.

There were only two people in the Long Drawing-room, neither of whom was known to Kate. She hesitated, looking inquiringly from one to the other.

Standing before the fire was a well-preserved gentleman of uncertain age; and lounging on a sofa was the most beautiful youth Kate had ever seen. Under a brow of alabaster were set a pair of large and oddly luminous blue eyes, fringed by long, curling lashes; his nose was classic; his petulant mouth most exquisitely curved; and his