"Oh, it was a cousin of mine, who happened to be coming out of the playhouse just as it happened, and wrote me word of it; and that the gentlemen had exchanged cards: so you see I had pretty good authority."
"Yes," replied Lady Juliana, with her usual asperity, "and no doubt made pretty good use of it. Pray, Ma'am, did you think it necessary to send a man and horse round the neighbourhood with this amusing piece of intelligence; or were you contented with your own personal exertions?"
"Dear Lady Juliana, I am sure I thought no harm; I only just mentioned it——"
"To every one who would hear you, no doubt. If, at least, you had spared us the recital, it would have been quite as delicate, and more consistent with your tender feelings for Lady St. Aubyn."
Poor Miss Alton, quite shocked to find she had given such offence to the old lady, of whom she stood in great awe, vainly attempted to rally her spirits, and soon after took her leave, earnestly wishing Lady Juliana had staid in London; for she foresaw the entré of the Castle would not be so easily granted to her now as it had been when only the kind-hearted Countess presided; and trembling, lest, if she were not more cautious in future, she should not be admitted to see the little stranger when it arrived, and take cake and caudle in Lady St. Aubyn's apartment.
"See," said Lady Juliana, drawing herself up, "see, my dear, the consequence of admitting such low, uneducated people to any degree of intimacy! This gossipping woman would not have ventured to hint at what had passed, had you kept her at a proper distance: but the easy impudence of such people in these degenerate times astonishes me. In the days of the Countess of St. Aubyn, my mother, she would scarcely have spoken to such a sort of person as this Miss—what do you call her?" For when Lady Juliana felt proud or indignant, she had a great knack of forgetting any name which had not a title tacked to it; though no one remembered more accurately those which had.
"Ah!" thought Ellen, "how with pride so overbearing could I ever have hoped to be myself exempted from this general censure of such sort of persons! How fortunate I may think myself, to have overcome a prejudice of such long standing."
In the society of a few agreeable neighbours, and the ever-pleasing conversation of Laura, the time passed serenely till the end of August: yet there were moments when gloom seemed again to steal over the features of St. Aubyn. His foreign letters arrived more frequently, but appeared to give him no satisfaction. With Ellen he studiously avoided all conversation on the subject of his anxiety: for he dreaded, in her present state, the least alarm, and delayed by every means in his power the apparently fast approaching crisis of his fate, till her safety should have been secured.
At length, after some hours of uneasy watching, and the most painful anxiety, Lady Juliana announced to him the birth of a son, who, notwithstanding all the alarms his mother had undergone in London, seemed likely as well as herself to do well. Lady Juliana was in raptures at this event, to which she had so long looked forward with impatience. Nothing that money could procure was wanting to decorate either the infant or the chamber where he lay, which, as well as that of the Countess, had been entirely new furnished in the most superb and commodious manner at her expence, Lady Juliana having insisted on paying for every thing prepared, even to the elegant cradle lined with quilted white satin; and not even Lady Meredith had softer cushions than those on which the infant heir reposed.
St. Aubyn, charmed with the lovely little creature, and to see its mother safe, appeared as if he had no wish ungratified, and left no tender attention unpaid which might ensure his Ellen's health and comfort. As she approached towards convalescence, Laura Cecil was her constant and most delightful companion, and well knew how to cheer and adorn the hours which were necessarily given to the quietude of her own apartments. The infant was rather delicate though healthy; but safe in its mother's fostering cares it strengthened every day, without those cares——