Circumstances favoured Miss Gould very decidedly. She was sufficiently attractive to be admired by men, and not so aggressively beautiful as to be hated by women. She did not in the least overrate her own personal charms, or the powers of her mind; but she knew that she was good-looking and clever enough to be admired in society, independently of the wealth which had been her passport into it; while other women would console themselves for her success, and explain it on the grounds of that wealth solely. She had found herself admitted at once into the best of the society in which Katharine Guyon had moved before her marriage, and the circle was constantly expanding. Lady Henmarsh was more popular as the chaperone of a well-looking and richly-dowered heiress than as the chaperone of a well-connected beauty with no money, and a detrimental though pleasant papa. Miss Guyon's remarkably sensible and commendable marriage had also shed reflected glory upon Lady Henmarsh; and as the dangerous beauty was dangerous no longer, but, on the contrary, a decided acquisition, being excessively rich, and possessing a praiseworthy taste for expensive hospitalities, all the petty jealousies and envies excited by Miss Guyon were forgiven to "that dear creature Mrs. Streightley."
Thus the world was to all seeming very fair and bright before the two young women whom a chance had brought together, to be thenceforth inextricably intermingled in each other's lives.
It belonged to the well-regulated completeness of Hester Gould's character, to the firmness of a woman in whom there was nothing little, however much there might be that was bad, that she never neglected a friend, never forgot a kindness, never overlooked a former claim on her consideration or gratitude. She was incapable of the meanness of disregarding those who had aided her when her lot was one of poverty and obscurity, and equally incapable of the impertinence of patronage. She felt gratitude, and she displayed it simply, genuinely, appropriately, with the true and delicate tact which was one of the finer features of her character. She had provided for the comfort of Aunt Lavinia as carefully as for her own in the arrangements of the handsome house, which the good old lady regarded with mingled admiration and misgiving. She had explained to her aunt that all the requirements of the world would be fulfilled by the arrangements into which she had entered with Lady Henmarsh; that she would never be expected to do violence to her principles by partaking of the dangerous and delusive delights to which her niece's novel position afforded her access; and she gave her carte-blanche for as many entertainments of the substantial-tea description, which they particularly affected, as her favourite "ministers" could be prevailed on to accept. Nor was her attention to her aunt limited to such formal provisions for her comfort. No pleasure, no hurry, no press of engagements, none of the flutter of popularity and general request into which Miss Gould soon fell, ever induced her to neglect the commonplace but worthy woman who had befriended her youth and shared her evil days. A portion of every morning was spent with Aunt Lavinia; and a visit to the quiet spinster preceded invariably the fulfilment of her evening engagements, over which her aunt would sigh furtively, and concerning which she reposed many mournful confidences and misgivings in sundry clerical breasts, without, however, feeling any distressingly deep conviction of the enormity of her niece's behaviour. Hester's old school-mistress had not been forgotten. The modest sum which the labour of half a lifetime had painfully accumulated, but which had yet some years to gather ere it could suffice for even such a humble maintenance as the well-nigh worn-out teacher longed for, was supplemented by the old pupil, to whom Miss Nickson never "could take;" and Laburnum Lodge, with the inky and lacerated desks, the dreary fly-blown maps, and the dreadful jangling rattletrap pianos, was disposed of by private contract. Once every week Hester Gould's brougham might be seen before the little gate of a pretty little cottage at Fulham; and Hester's figure, grown graceful now, and clad in elegant attire, might be recognised seated in the little parlour-window, as she gave an hour of the time on which society made insatiable demands to the woman who had done her duty to the orphan girl for conscience' sake.
She was no less considerate of those to whom her former obligations were of another kind, and must be redeemed in a different way. Among their number were the Hampstead Hebrews, Rachel and Rebecca Thacker, and Ellen Streightley. To the dark-browed sisters of her confidential friend Miss Gould extended every social advantage within her power to compass for them. They found their lives wonderfully brightened, and their ideas much expanded under Hester's influence; and they became more enthusiastically fond of her than ever.
Ellen Streightley had become less enthusiastic about Katharine since she had been in town. The constant stir, the fashionable jargon, the incessant familiar mention of places, and persons, and circumstances, all foreign to her knowledge, her tastes, and her ideas, troubled and confused her. The same sort of thing had existed at Middlemeads indeed, but on a lesser scale; and then Ellen had had Hester to support her, and she had not felt so insignificant, so lost, as she felt now, in the ever-shifting, ever-thronging crowd in Portland Place. Katharine was as kind to her as ever, but she had no time to occupy herself with her; and the romantic vision of sisterly confidence, which had made her sojourn at Middlemeads delightful to Ellen, vanished away before the realism of the tumultuous frivolity of London life. Ellen had been enchanted with Middlemeads, but the house in Portland Place alarmed more than it pleased her. She remembered penitently the warnings of Decimus, who was soon coming back now--a circumstance which rendered them all the more terrible; she was chilled by the cool undemonstrative disapproval of her mother, who had but once entered her son's splendid house; she felt out of her place there; she was no longer at home with Katharine as she had been at Middlemeads; here she was only one of her sister-in-law's innumerable guests. But when Ellen was with Hester Gould she had no such feeling. Hester was quite unaltered, enjoyed as much leisure, and was as well disposed to share it with her friend as in the old days. Hester's house was very handsome, and her establishment was very imposing, and in all things different from the Brixton villa; but Ellen was not dazzled and bewildered and put at a disadvantage by this difference, as she was by that of Katharine's house and manner of living; she did not feel like a stranger at Palace Gardens. Hester would receive her as calmly and pleasantly as though no afternoon engagements were in contemplation; would listen to all her simple, eager, unimpressive confidences with unwavering patience; would listen even to the outpourings of the honest missionary, who had a habit of digressing into sermons in his love-letters; in short, Hester took a sound and serious interest in Ellen's fate. Miss Gould excessively disliked the deportation of her friend to foreign, and probably cannibal, parts, and had given much consideration to the question whether it might not be possible to restrain the ardour of the Rev. Decimus by the mundane process of purchasing him a living at home. She had very little doubt of being able to procure him the advantages of heathen society, provided he did not insist on black pagans. Down in Staffordshire now, or in outlying London districts, or among the truly rural population of Devonshire, he might surely find hideous ignorance, crime, and brutish unconsciousness of any thing but the lowest instincts of nature, flourishing as luxuriantly as in the Feejee or the Andaman Islands. If the police reports spoke truth, there was room for the evolutions of a whole noble army of martyrs in picturesque and prosperous England; and Decimus might be quite as useful, while Ellen would be infinitely more safe. So Hester thought about the matter, and came to the conclusion--excusable to her ignorance, and deducible from her experience of the ease with which every thing one wants can be had for money--that a living in British heathendom might be purchased. She did not impart her ideas to Robert Streightley, for she had her own reasons for knowing that he was not in a condition to receive any proposition involving the expenditure of ready-money with much favour just then; but she took Mr. Thacker into her confidence; and as that gentleman's religious persuasion prevented his feeling any scruples concerning a transaction of the kind, he undertook to buy a living for Hester's unconscious protégé with as much alacrity and unconcern as he would have undertaken to hire an opera-box or to match a carriage-horse. "Remember, if you want a presentation likely to fall in soon, you can't get one cheap," was his sole demurrer when Miss Gould explained, with the utmost näiveté, the object of her wishes.
"I don't want to get it cheap, Mr. Thacker," replied Miss Gould. "Provided it's comfortable, and there's enough to do to keep the pocket-Apostle busy, and it's a wholesome place for Ellen, and not dangerous in the way of strikes and mill-burnings,--I am content. I don't think I should like it too rural and picturesque, please, because the murders in places of that sort are always so very horrible."
"By Jove! she gives me her directions as if it were a semi-detached villa with a good croquet-lawn she wanted," said Mr. Thacker, as he left Hester's presence, having cheerfully undertaken the somewhat difficult task she had imposed upon him. "There's nothing on earth to equal the unreasonableness of even the most reasonable woman, and she certainly is that. Not bad for an unconscious bit of satire either on Christian notions in general,--would be nuts to some of our people, I daresay."
The season was at its height, and all London seemed abandoned to the pursuit of pleasure, almost as completely as the gay capital of France in its normal condition;--all London, that is to say, except the few hundreds of thousands who were suffering, dying, bearing all the ills and miseries of life, unseen and unheard by their more fortunate brethren, for whom the hour of calamity had not yet sounded. Among the most fashionable of the fashionable réunions fixed for one brilliant night in June,--a night on which the fields and trees, the rivers and the gardens, were bathed in moonlight, and fanned by warm perfumed air; a night on which all nature was wrapped in a trance of delight,--was Mrs. Pendarvis's ball. Her ball par excellence, be it observed; for she "opened her rooms" for dancing and music, for charades and kettledrums, for every conceivable purpose for which people could be gathered together, a most satisfactory number of times during the season. But this was a grand, an exceptional occasion,--a yearly event, which found record in the chronicles of the doings of the magnates of society, and formed an epoch in the history of each successive year.
Katharine Streightley and her husband were going to this ball. Miss Guyon had never missed the grand occasion since she had been "out," and its last recurrence had been memorable to her. She remembered it well as she sat under her maid's hands, and suffered herself to be attired far more splendidly than usual. She took a secret pleasure in forcing upon her own attention the contrast between the past and the present on this night. When her toilet was an accomplished fact, she stood before her glass and gazed upon her radiant figure, clothed in the richest white satin, and decorated with the valuable and quaintly-set diamonds which had been her mother's sole legacy to her, and a thrill of irrepressible triumph ran through her whole frame. She felt her own beauty as she had never felt it before; and she acknowledged that it was very pleasant to have the means of adorning it so lavishly, of adding so much to its power. Her toilet-table was covered with cases in which gems of great value and beauty were nestled away in green-velvet niches, or displayed boastfully upon backgrounds of satin; but she had left them all undisturbed; her mother's diamonds should be her only ornaments that night. She desired her maid to bring more lights, and set them about the room, so as to show her her own figure in every point of view. The woman obeyed, with some surprise: this was not like Mrs. Streightley, who, though inordinately extravagant, was not practically vain, with the kind of vanity which impresses itself upon the attention of a waiting-woman.
She was looking over her white shoulder at the reflection in the long glass behind her, and her maid was standing by with a heap of soft white wrapping drapery on her arm, when Robert knocked at the door of her dressing-room. She bade him "come in," in a pleasant voice, and he did so.