Page:Once a Week Dec 1860 to June 61.pdf/293

 282 She would never travel without all that she wanted. Don’t let us talk about her any more, you great cross old thing.”

“Nay, I am not cross,” said Urquhart, taking one of her blond tresses in his large fingers. “I make a distinction, as my old schoolmaster used to say, between the child that has gone wrong and the child that has been led wrong, though when the old fellow came down on us with the taws I incline to believe that the delicate distinction vanished from his mind, or else his mind was not on terms with his old hand.”

“Were you beaten much at school, Robert?”

“Not half enough,” said her husband, in the tone of one who records a grievance. “I’d be a better man, if old Macfarlane had done his duty by me, but his conscience got seared in later life, and he only licked the small boys whom it was no trouble to fustigate; not that they didn’t deserve all they got, though.”

“You could not be a better man than you are, Robert dear.”

“Eh, my woman, but that’s a heathenish doctrine,” said her husband, laughing. “I’m afraid your religious education was what might be expected from that prelatical church of yours. You hav’n’t got much soundness of views out of what Sir Walter calls the ‘lethargy’ of the Church of England. However, I’ll not say that I’m much worse than other people. I’ll leave it to my wife to say that, behind my back.”

“As if she would,” said Bertha.

“Eh? He’ll be a bold man that would like to hear all his wife says of him to other folks, Bertha. I’ve no such false courage, my dear woman.”

“I am sure you might hear all I say of you, dear, though I know that I do not say half enough of your goodness. Don’t, Robert dear—you’ll pull my hair out. Let me go. I must talk to Angelique about your dinner, for I am afraid she has made no preparation for you.”

“Well, go along, and then come back and soothe my savage breast with some music, for I’m not in the mood to work.”

“Ah, you will keep thinking about Laura, and it is not right in you after we have made it all up,” pouted Bertha.

“No, I’m thinking about her husband.”

“Oh, it will be all right. He is very fond of her, and he will soon forgive her foolishness. He is not a stern hard man like somebody else’s husband, who makes his poor little wife afraid to speak to him.”

And the poor little wife left the room, to hurry off the note to her sister. And then she returned, and made herself perfectly agreeable to Robert, and sung him Scottish songs, into which she infused that pathos which has deceived so many a wise man into believing that a throat has some connection with the heart, and which, doubtless, suggested to the wisest of Englishmen the hint given by Kent, “not so young, sir, as to love a woman for her singing.” Bertha not only sang tears into the eyes of her husband, but even into her own, as she warbled the songs of his country—and while she was doing this, far other tears stood in the eyes of the sister to whom she had transmitted the note received in the garden.

It was not until the exigencies of the toilette sent her to her own room, that Bertha thought it necessary to summon her lady’s-maid, and Henderson had, to her indignation, been permitted to make some progress in her duties before her mistress inquired whether she had delivered that letter. Then, of course, the answer was monosyllabic.

“Did Mrs. Lygon send any message?”

“None, Madame.”

“Gently, Henderson, you are tearing my hair, I am certain.”

The lady’s-maid brushed, and divided, and intersected, and plaited, and folded, and pinned, and performed all the rest of the capillary operations in a dogged silence. Such a manifestation of displeasure would have been utterly lost upon Mrs. Lygon, but was one of the things which it was in Bertha’s nature to notice.

"You have lost your tongue to-day, Henderson, I think.”

Henderson, delighted at having gained her little victory, did not abuse it by petulance, but said,

“Mrs. Lygon said that you had a headache, Madame, so I did not care to speak.”

“Headache! had I a headache?” said Bertha, in her vacant way, and fixing her eyes on the window, yet not looking through it. “Oh! I dare say I had, but it has gone off.”

“Mrs. Lygon was looking very pale aud ill. Madame.”

“Was she? I did not observe it, Henderson. Bring the braids lower down.”

“I’ll make you answer more feelingly than that, Madame,” thought Henderson, as she disarranged her work, and flattened out a braid into a new shape. “But it was not to be wondered at, Madame,” she said, aloud.

“No, perhaps not.”

“I mean, Madame, that when I got into the garden, I saw a certain person part from Mrs. Lygon?”

“What!” said Bertha, suddenly turning. The gesture snatched her hair from the hands of Henderson, to the detriment of the pending operation, but without causing the least impatient expression upon the face of the lady’s-maid—on the contrary, she looked pleased.

“He had been speaking to her.”

“And how did they seem—I mean were they quarrelling—at high words?”

Perhaps it was only into the mind of a person like Henderson that such a thought could have passed, as then darted across that curious repertory.

“Oh, dear, no, Madame.”

“They seemed on good terms?”

“The best, Madame.”

“What do you mean by the best?”

“He was smiling, Madame, as he spoke—of course I could not hear what he said, but he seemed very much pleased at something Mrs. Lygon was saying, and he kissed his hand.”

“His hand!” repeated Bertha, hastily.