“Mr. Vincent,” said Mrs. Hilyard breaking in upon Vincent’s deprecation. “I am glad to hear you had somebody to help you in such a delicate distress. We poor women can’t afford to be so squeamish. What! are you going away? My dear, be sure you say downstairs that you brought that poor creature some tea and sugar, and how grateful she was. That explains everything, you know, and does my lady credit at the same time. Goodbye. Well, I’ll kiss you if you insist upon it; but what can Mr. Vincent think to see such an operation performed between us? There! my love, you can make the men do what you like, but you know of old you never could conquer me.”
“Then you will refuse over and over again—and you don’t mind what I say—and you know he’s in Lonsdale, and why he’s there, and all about him—”
“Hush,” said the dark woman, looking all the darker as she stood in that bright creature’s shadow. “I know, and always will know, wherever he goes, and that he is after evil wherever he goes; and I refuse, and always will refuse—and my darling pretty Alice,” she cried, suddenly going up with rapid vehemence to the beautiful young woman beside her, and kissing once more the delicate rose-cheek to which her own made so great a contrast, “I don’t mind in the least what you say.”
“Ah, Rachel, I don’t understand you,” said Lady Western, looking at her wistfully.
“You never did, my dear; but don’t forget to mention about the tea and sugar as you go downstairs,” said Mrs. Hilyard, subsiding immediately, not without the usual gleam in her eyes and movement of her mouth, “else it might be supposed you came to have your fortune told, or something like that; and I wish your ladyship bon voyage, and no encounter with ragged boys in your way. Mr. Vincent,” she continued, with great gravity, standing in the middle of the room, when Vincent, trembling with excitement, afraid, with the embarrassing timidity of inferior position, to offer his services, yet chafing in his heart to be obliged to stay, reluctantly closed the door, which he had opened for Lady Western’s exit, “tell me why a young man of your spirit loses such an opportunity of conducting the greatest beauty in Carlingford to her carriage? Suppose she should come across another ragged boy, and faint on the stairs?”
“I should have been only too happy; but as I am not so fortunate as to know Lady Western,” said the young minister, hesitating, “I feared to presume—”
With an entirely changed aspect his strange companion interrupted him. “Lady Western could not think that any man whom she met in my house presumed in offering her a common civility,” said Mrs. Hilyard, with the air of a duchess, and an imperious gleam out of her dark eyes. Then she recollected herself, gave her startled visitor a comical look, and dropped into her chair, before which that coarsest of poor needlewoman’s work was lying. “My house! it does look like a place to inspire respect, to be sure,” she continued, with a hearty perception of the ludicrous, which Vincent was much too preoccupied to notice. “What fools we all are! but, my dear Mr. Vincent, you are too modest. My Lady Western could not frown upon anybody who honoured her with such a rapt observation. Don’t fall in love with her, I beg of you. If she were merely a flirt, I shouldn’t mind, but out of her very goodness she’s dangerous. She can’t bear to give pain to anybody, which of course implies that she gives double and treble pain when the time comes. There! I’ve warned you; for of course you’ll meet again.”
“Small chance of that,” said Vincent, who had been compelling himself to remain quiet, and restraining his impulse, now that the vision had departed, to rush away out of the impoverished place. “Small chance of that,” he repeated, drawing a long breath, as he listened with intent ears to the roll of the carriage which carried Her away; “society in Carlingford has no room for a poor Dissenting minister.”
“All the better for him,” said Mrs. Hilyard, regarding him with curious looks, and discerning with female acuteness the haze of excitement and incipient passion which surrounded him. “Society’s all very well for people who have been brought up in it; but for a young recluse like you, that don’t know the world, it’s murder. Don’t look affronted. The reason is, you expect too much—twenty times more than anybody ever finds. But you don’t attend to my philosophy. Thinking of your sermon, Mr. Vincent? And how is our friend the butterman? I trust life begins to look more cheerful to you under his advice.”
“Life?” said the preoccupied minister, who was gazing at the spot where that lovely apparition had been; “I find it change its aspects perpetually. You spoke of Lonsdale just now, did you not? Is it possible that you know that little place? My mother and sister live there.”
“I am much interested to know that you have a mother and sister,” said the poor needlewoman before him, looking up with calm,
