“Has Colonel Haggerstone been to see him?” asked she.
“No, madam. His groom called with a present of two florins.”
“Oh! impossible, sir.”
“Perfectly true, madam. I was present when the money was returned to the man by a young lady, whose attentions to the sufferer saved him the pain this indignity would have cost him.”
“A young lady, did you say? How does he happen to be so fortunate in his attendance?”
“Her father chances to be this poor creature's tenant, and many mutual acts of kindness have passed between them.”
“Not even scandal could asperse her motives in the present case,” said Lady Hester, with an insolent laugh. “It looked hardly human when they lifted it from the ground.”
“Scandal has been guilty of as gross things, madam,” said Grounsell, sternly, “but I would defy her here, although there is beauty enough to excite all her malevolence.” And with this speech, delivered with a pointedness there was no mistaking, the doctor left the room.
Impressions, or what she herself would have called “feelings,” chased each other so rapidly through Lady Hester's mind, that her whole attention was now directed to the young lady of whom Grounsell spoke, and whose singular charity excited all her curiosity. There is a strange tendency to imitation among those whose intelligences lie unexercised by any call of duty or necessity. No suggestion coming from within, they look without themselves for occupation and amusement. Lady Hester was a prominent disciple of this school; all her life she had been following, eager to see whether the fashions that became, or the pleasures that beguiled, others, might not suit herself. If such a course of existence inevitably conduces to ennui and discontent, it is no less difficult to strive against; and they who follow in the track of others' footsteps have all the weariness of the road without the cheering excitement of the journey.
If the young lady found pleasure in charity, why should n't she? Benevolence, too, for aught she knew, might be very becoming. There were a hundred little devices of costume and manner which might be adopted to display it. What a pretty version of the good Samaritan modernized one might give in a Shetland scarf and a cottage bonnet the very thing Chalons would like to paint; and what an effective “interior” might be made of the dwarf's chamber, crowded with rude peasant faces, all abashed and almost awe-struck as she entered.