To Theodora her attendance was a new and exquisite repose. It was the first taste of her mother’s love, and made her content to be helpless; as there she lay, murmuring thanks, and submitting to be petted with a grateful face of childlike peace, resting in her mother’s affection, and made happy by the depth of warm feeling in her father’s words.
‘It is a good speculation to be ill,’ said she, with a smile of strong feeling when they had bidden her good night, and left her to Violet, who was to sleep on a mattress on the floor.
CHAPTER 4
Will you walk into my parlour?’ said a spider to a fly.
—MARY HOWITT
And where was Arthur?
Spending the day with his sporting friends, much to his own satisfaction, till in the evening, greatly against his will, he was taken out to dine with an old Mr. Randall, of Gothlands, the master of the hounds.
His nieces, the Misses Marstone, were the ladies of the house—well-dressed people, a little ‘passees’, but apparently not having found it out. Arthur watched the arrivals hoping that the order of precedence might not consign him to the flow of talk, of which he had already had quite a sufficiency, when, to his surprise, two ladies, evidently at home, entered together.
One—thin, sallow, spectacled—was, as he knew, an inhabitant; but the other—small, slight, and retiring, and, in spite of clinging unfresh muslin and shrinking figure, with the unmistakable air of high breeding, was a most unexpected sight. At least, thought he, here was one lady who would not bore him, and making his way to her, he inquired for Lady Elizabeth. Emma, on the other hand, asked after Violet; and it was curious that both questions were put and answered with constraint, as if each was conscious of being something like a truant.
Another surprise. ‘Mr. Gardner.’ In walked Mark himself, and, after shaking hands with the elder Miss Marstone, came towards Emma and her friend, and was received with cordial familiarity. He entered into conversation with Arthur, drawing a little further from Miss Brandon at each step, till having brought him close to old Mr. Randall, and placed him under the infliction of a long prose about the hounds, he retreated, and was soon again in conversation with the two friends, Emma’s face raised and lighted up with eagerness.