Annabella had little idea of the amount of trouble and excitement which she was causing, nor how heavily the expense of hospitality would press on her proud but poor entertainers. While the countess was conversing in the sitting room with the doctor, Bates arrived with her lady’s boxes, and was ordered to carry them up to her apartment. The maid surprised poor Cecilia on her knees, industriously stitching up a hole in a worn-out drugget, her face flushed and heated with the unwonted occupation. Miss Bardon started up in some confusion, her pride deeply mortified at being found in a position, and engaged in an employment so unbefitting a fine lady, which it was her ambition always to appear.
An Unwelcome Surprise.
Bates looked round with wondering contempt on the miserable hovel, as she deemed it, which her young mistress had chosen in preference to the luxurious apartments of Dashleigh Hall. The lady’s maid had serious doubts as to whether she could so compromise her own dignity as to remain in a house where no “footman was kept.” To share a pigeon-hole seven feet square with a deaf and stupid maid-of-all-work, who could not even listen to her gossip,—did ever devoted lady’s maid submit to such hardship before! Annabella, on her part, found fault with nothing, never appeared to notice any difficulties, and accommodated herself to cottage life as if she had been accustomed to it from her childhood.
“There is not a particle of pride in her!” exclaimed the admiring Cecilia, as she had done upon a previous occasion.
CHAPTER XIX.
EXPECTATION.
“It is you