"Oh, fie! Miss Benette, to talk so, then, and to shock yourself, as you must, if you are faithless."
"Poor I, faithless! Well, I am not important enough for it to signify. And yet I should like to tell you what I mean, because you were always kind to me, and I should not wish you to despise me now. No, Mr. Auchester, I am not faithless; I love music more and more; it is the form of my religion; I dare to call it altogether holy,—I am sure, indeed, it must be so, or it would have been trodden long ago into nothing with the evil they have heaped over it to hide it, and the mistakes they have made about it. I act and I sing, because that is what I can do best; but my idea of music goes with yours, and therefore I am not excited as I should be, if I were filling up a place such as that which you fill; though I would not leave my own for any consideration, and hope to continue in it. My excitement since I came here, where most ladies would be dull or sick, has arisen from the feeling that I am brought into contact with what is most like music, as I always find solitude, and also because since I came I have been raised higher by several spirits which are lofty in their desires, instead of being dragged through a mass of all opinions as I was abroad. My pleasures here are so great that I feel my soul to be quite young again, and to grow younger; and you cannot fancy what it is to return here after being in London, because you do not go to London, and if you did go to London, you would not do as I do."
She turned to me here, and told me it was her dinner-hour, asking me to remain and dine with her. It was about two o'clock, and I hesitated not to stay,—indeed, I know not that I could have gone.
We arose together, and I led her forward. We crossed the hall to a door beyond us, when, removing her little hand from my arm, and laying it on the lock, she looked into my face and smiled.
"You remembered me so well that I hope you will remember an old friend of mine who is staying here with me."
Before I could reply, or even marvel, she opened the door, and we entered. The little dining-room was lined with warmer hues than the airy drawing-room, but white muslin curtains made sails within the crimson ones, and some person stood within these, lightly screened, and looking out over the blind.
"Laura," said Miss Benette, and she turned with exquisite elegance. Had it not been for her name, which touched my memory, I could not have remembered her,—certainly, at least, not then.
Perhaps, when we were seated opposite at table, with nothing between us but a vase of garden flowers, I might have made out her lineaments; but I was called upon by my reminding chivalry to assist the hostess in the dissection of spring chickens and roasted lamb, and there was something besides about that very Laura I did not like to face until she should at least speak and reveal herself, as by the voice one cannot fail to do.
However she spoke not, nor did Clara speak to her, though we two talked a good deal,—that is to say, I talked, as so it behooved me to behave, and as I wished to see Miss Benette eat. When, at last, all traces of the snowy damask were swept out by a pair of careful hands, and we were left alone with the cut decanters, the early strawberries, and sweet summer oranges, I did determine to look, for fear Miss Lemark should think I did not dare to do so. I was not mistaken, as it happened, in believing her to be quite capable of this construction, as I discovered on regarding her immediately.
Her childish nonchalance had ripened into a hauteur quite alarming; for though she was scarcely my own age, she might have been ten years older. Not that her form was not lithe,—lithe as it could be to be endowed with the proper complement of muscles,—but for a certain sharpness of outline her countenance would have been languid in repose; her brow retained its singular breadth, but had not gained in elevation; her eyes were large and lambent, fringed with lashes that swept her cheek, though not darker than her hair, which waved as the willow in slightly-turned tresses to her waist. That waist was so extremely slight that it scarcely looked natural, and yet was entirely so, as was evident from the way she moved in her clothes.