How differently, too, did the contents affect her! So long as they referred to herself, in her own latest narrative of her life, she read with avidity and pleasure. Nelly's innocent wonderment was a very delightful sensation; her affectionate participation in her happiness was all grateful; even her gentle warnings against the seductions of such a career were not unpleasing; but the subject changed to home, and what an alteration came over her spirit! How dark and dismal became the picture, how poverty-stricken each incident and event, what littleness in every detail, how insignificant the occupations that interested them!
How great the surprise she felt at their interest in such trifles; how astonished that their hopes and fears, their wishes or their dreads, could take so mean a form! This came with peculiar force before her, from a paragraph that closed Nelly's last letter, and which ran thus:
“Think of our happiness, dearest Kate! We have just seen one who saw you lately, one of your Florence acquaintances; and I believe I might go further and say friends, for the terms in which he spoke of you evinced sincere and true regard. It was so kind of him to find us out, just to come and tell us about you; indeed, he remained a day here for no other purpose, since his diplomatic duties were urging him to England with speed.”
When Kate had read thus far, she stopped, her face and neck crimson with shame, and her heart beating almost audibly. With lightning rapidity she ran over to herself three or four names of ministers and envoys who had lately left Florence, trembling to think it might be the gorgeous Russian, Naradskoi, the princely Neapolitan, Carnporese, or the haughty Spaniard, Don Hernandez Orloes, who had visited their humble interior. What a humiliation for her, if she were ever to see them again! Home, at that instant, presented itself before her but as the witness of her shame: how sordid and miserable did its poverty appear, and with what vulgarity associated! Her poor old father, around whose neck but a moment before she would have hung with rapture, she shrank from with very terror: his dress, his look, his accent every word he spoke, every allusion he made, were tortures to her; and Nelly even Nelly how she blushed to fancy her humble guise and poor exterior; the little dress of colored wool, from the pockets of which her carving-tools appeared; and then how the scene rose before her! her father producing Nelly's last work, some little group in clay or wood. She pictured to herself his pride, her sister's bashfulness, the stranger's pretended admiration! Till now, these emotions had never seen a counterfeit. Oh, how she shuddered as her thoughts took more and more the colors of reality, and the room itself, and its poverty-struck furniture, rose before her! At last she read on:
“His visit was of course a great honor, and probably, had he come on any other errand but to speak of you, we should have been half overwhelmed with the condescension; but in very truth, Kate, I quite forgot all his greatness and his grandeur, and lost sight of his ever holding any higher mission than to bring news of my dearest sister. Papa, of course, asked him to dinner. I believe he would have invited the Czar himself under like circumstances; but, fortunately for us, for him, and perhaps for you too, he was too deaf to hear the request, and politely answered that he would send my letter to you with pleasure, under his own diplomatic seal; and so we parted. I ought to add that Mr. Foglass intends speedily to return to Florence.”
Three or four times did Kate read this name over before she could persuade herself that she had it aright. Foglass! she had never even heard of him. The name was remarkable enough to remember, as belonging to a person of diplomatic rank, and yet it was quite new to her. She turned to Lady Hester's invitation book, but no such name was there. What form her doubts might have taken there is no knowing, when Mr. Albert Jekyl was seen to cross the courtyard, and enter the house.
Knowing that if any could, he would be the person to resolve the difficulty, she hastened downstairs to meet him.
“Mr. Jekyl,” cried she, hurriedly, “is there such a man as Mr. Foglass in this breathing world of ours?”
“Of course there is, Miss Dalton,” said he, smiling at her eagerness.
“A minister or an envoy at some court?”