“Mamma!” said Fanny, and the tears sprang to her eyes. But Lady Ellinor looked to me sublime as she spoke, her eyes kindled, her breast heaved. The wife taking the husband’s part against the child, and comprehending so well what the child felt not, despite its experience of every day, and what the world would never know, despite all the vigilance of its praise and its blame, was a picture, to my taste, finer than any in the collection.
Her face softened as she saw the tears in Fanny’s bright hazel eyes; she held out her hand, which her child kissed tenderly; and whispering, “‘T is not the giddy word you must go by, mamma, or there will be something to forgive every minute,” Miss Trevanion glided from the room.
“Have you a sister?” asked Lady Ellinor.
“No.”
“And Trevanion has no son,” she said, mournfully. The blood rushed to my cheeks. Oh, young fool again! We were both silent, when the door opened, and Mr. Trevanion entered. “Humph!” said he, smiling as he saw me,—and his smile was charming, though rare. “Humph, young sir, I came to seek for you,—I have been rude, I fear; pardon it. That thought has only just occurred to me, so I left my Blue Books, and my amanuensis hard at work on them, to ask you to come out for half an hour,—just half an hour, it is all I can give you: a deputation at one! You dine and sleep here, of course?”
“Ah, sir, my mother will be so uneasy if I am not in town to-night!”
“Pooh!” said the member; “I’ll send an express.”
“Oh, no indeed; thank you.”
“Why not?”
I hesitated. “You see, sir, that my father and mother are both new to London; and though I am new too, yet they may want me,—I may be of use.” Lady Ellinor put her hand on my head and sleeked down my hair as I spoke.