Page:Once a Week June to Dec 1863.pdf/307

5, 1863.] to Gilbert Monckton, and quietly abiding the issue. But she had chosen her path now, and must stand by her choice, on pain of appearing the weakest and most cowardly of women.

“My letter is posted,” she said to herself. “Gilbert will receive it to-morrow morning. I should be a coward to go back; for however much I may have been to blame in the matter, he has treated me very badly.”

She wiped away some tears that had come into her eyes as she took the rings from her wedding finger, and then began to play again.

This time she dashed into one of the liveliest and most brilliant fantasias she could remember, a very pot-pourri of airs; a scientific hodge podge of Scotch melodies; now joyous, now warlike and savage, now plaintive and tender; always capricious in the extreme, and running away every now and then into the strangest variations, the most eccentric cadences. The piece was one of Thalberg’s chef-d’œuvres, and Eleanor played it magnificently. As she struck the final chords, sharp and rapid as a rattling peal of musketry, Miss Barkham re-entered the room.

She had the air of being rather annoyed, and she hesitated a little before speaking to Eleanor, who rose from the piano and began to put on her gloves.

“Really, Miss Villars,” she said, “it is most incomprehensible to me, but since Mrs. Lennard herself wishes it, I—”

She stopped and fidgetted a little with the gold pencil-case hanging to her watch-chain.

“I can’t at all understand this sort of thing,” she resumed; “however, of course I wash my hands of all responsibility. Have you any objection to travel, Miss Villars?” she asked, suddenly.

Eleanor opened her eyes with a look of astonishment at this abrupt question.

“Objection to travel?” she repeated; “I—”

“Have you any objection to go abroad—to Paris, for instance—if I could obtain you a situation?”

“Oh, no,” Eleanor answered, with a sigh, “not at all; I would just as soon go to Paris as anywhere else.”

“Very well, then, if that is the case, I think I can get you a situation immediately. There is a lady in the next room who was here yesterday, and who really gave me a most severe headache with her fidgety, childish ways. However, she wants to meet with a young lady as a companion immediately—that is the grand difficulty. She leaves London for Paris by this evening’s mail, and she put off engaging the person she required until yesterday afternoon, when she came to me in a fever of anxiety, and wanted me to introduce her to a lady instanter. She stopped all the afternoon in the next room, and I took ever so many young ladies in to her, all of whom seemed well qualified for the situation, which really demands very little. But not one of them would suit Mrs. Lennard. She was very polite to them, and made all kinds of affable speeches to them, and dismissed them in the most ladylike manner; and then she told me afterwards that she didn’t take a fancy to them, and she was determined not to engage any one she didn’t take a fancy to, as she wanted to be very fond of her companion, and make quite a sister of her. That was what she said, and, good gracious me,” cried Miss Barkham, “how am I to find her somebody she can take a fancy to, and make a sister of, at a quarter-of-an-hour’s notice? I assure you, Miss Villars, my head felt quite in a whirl after she went away yesterday afternoon; and it’s beginning to be in a whirl again now.”

Eleanor waited very patiently while Miss Barkham endeavoured to collect her scattered senses.

“I can scarcely hope this very capricious lady will take a fancy to me,” she said, smiling.

“Why, my dear,” exclaimed Miss Barkham, “that’s the very thing I came to tell you. She has taken a fancy to you.”

“Taken a fancy to me!” repeated Eleanor; “but she has not seen me.”

“Of course not, my dear. But she really is the most confusing, I may almost say bewildering, person I ever remember meeting with. I was in the next room talking to this Mrs. Lennard, who is very pretty and fashionable-looking, only a little untidy in her dress, when you began to play that Scotch fantasia. Mrs. Lennard stopped to listen, and after she had listened a few moments, she cried out suddenly, ‘Now, I dare say that’s an old frump?’ I said, ‘What, ma’am?’ for, upon my word, my dear, I didn’t know whether she meant the piece, or the piano, or what. ‘I dare say the lady who’s playing is an old frump,’ she said. ‘Old frumps almost always play well; in point of fact, old frumps are generally very clever. But I’m determined not to have any one I can’t make a sister of; and I must have one by three o’clock this afternoon, or Major Lennard will be cross, and I shall go mad.’ Well, Miss Villars, I told Mrs. Lennard your age, and described your appearance and manners, that is to say, as well as I was able to do so after our very brief acquaintance, and I had no sooner finished, than she exclaimed, ‘That will do; if she can play Scotch melodies like that, and is nice, I’ll engage her.’ I then explained to Mrs. Lennard that you could give no references; ‘and that of course,’ I added, ‘would be an insuperable objection;’ but she interrupted me in a manner that would have appeared very impertinent in any one but her, and cried out, ‘Insuperable fiddlesticks! If she’s nice, I’ll engage her. She can play to me all the morning while I paint upon velvet;’ and you’re to come with me, please Miss Villars, and be introduced to her.”

Eleanor took up her muff and followed Miss Barkham on to the landing, but at this moment three ladies appeared upon the top stair, and the principal of the establishment was called upon to receive them.

“If you’ll go in by yourself, my dear,” she whispered to Eleanor, pointing to the door of the back drawing-room, “I shall be much obliged; you’ll find Mrs. Lennard a most affable person.”

Eleanor readily assented. She opened the door and went into the primly-furnished back drawing-room. Mrs. Major Lennard was a little woman, and she was standing on tiptoe upon the hearthrug, in order to survey herself in the chimney-glass while she re-arranged the pale blue strings of