Page:Waverley Novels, vol. 22 (1831).djvu/125

 ness and advancement will make him young again.—And that I may cheer him the sooner,”—she wiped her eyes as she spoke—“I must be cheerful myself—My lord must not find me insensible to his kindness, or sorrowful when he snatches a visit to his recluse, after so long an absence.—Be merry, Janet—the night wears on, and my lord must soon arrive.—Call thy father hither, and call Varney also—I cherish resentment against neither; and though I may have some room to be displeased with both, it shall be their own fault if ever a complaint against them reaches the Earl through my means.—Call them hither, Janet.”

Janet Foster obeyed her mistress; and in a few minutes after, Varney entered the withdrawing-room with the graceful ease and unclouded front of an accomplished courtier, skilled, under the veil of external politeness, to disguise his own feelings, and to penetrate those of others. Anthony Foster plodded into the apartment after him, his natural gloomy vulgarity of aspect seeming to become yet more remarkable, from his clumsy attempt to conceal the mixture of anxiety and dislike with which he looked on her, over whom he had hitherto exercised so severe a control, now so splendidly attired, and decked with so many pledges of the interest which she possessed in her husband’s affections. The blundering reverence which he made, rather at than to the Countess, had confession in it—It was like the reverence which the criminal makes to the judge, when he at once owns his guilt and implores mercy,—which is at the same time an impudent and embar-