The question of toilet was evidently one of supreme indifference to the honest captain; a dress good enough to walk in seemed to him to be good enough to eat in; but he made no difficulty about compliance. He was just about to quit the room, when it was entered by Arabella.
The young lady stared at the rough-looking stranger with an air of haughty inquiry which would have abashed a sensitive man; but Captain Thistlewood was as little troubled with shyness as with hypochondria—his nerves were weather-proof, as well as his constitution—his perceptions were blunt to ridicule or insult, if only directed against himself.
“Ha! another fine daughter!” he exclaimed; “we must not meet as strangers, my dear;” and he would have greeted Arabella in the same paternal style as her sister, but for the backward step and the indignant look, which might have beseemed an empress.
“Who is this man?” she exclaimed.
“Mrs. Effingham’s uncle and my friend,” was her father’s reply, uttered in a tone which effectually repressed for the time any further expression of Arabella’s scorn.
The two girls retired to the back drawing-room to converse together, Louisa full of mirth, Arabella of indignation; while Clemence, glad to be a few minutes alone with her husband, laid her hand fondly on his arm, and murmured, “How good you have been to me, Vincent!”
“I could wish that your uncle had not arrived till to-morrow,” said Mr. Effingham; “but I could not but treat with courtesy and kindness him from whose hand I received my wife. Will there be room at the table?”
“Yes; Dr. Howard has declined.”
“To which lady would you introduce Captain Thistlewood?”
“Let me consider,” said Clemence, thoughtfully; “who is most good-natured and quiet? Uncle sometimes says such strange things.”