“What about?” demanded Lysken, to whom Blanche was unintelligible.
“About nought. Let be!”
“I cannot tell wherefore thou art vexed, Blanche,” said Lysken, resuming her darning, in that calm style which is eminently provoking to any one in a passion.
“Thou seest not every matter in the world,” retorted Blanche, with an air of superiority. “And touching this matter, ’tis plain thou wist nothing. Verily, thou hast gain therein; for he that hath bettered knowledge—as saith Solomon—hath but increased sorrow.”
“Blanche, I do not know whereof thou art talking! Did I put thee out by saying I had thought shame to have cared to wed with any, or what was it? Why, wouldst not thou?”
This final affront was as the last straw to the camel. Deigning no answer, which she felt would be an angry one, Blanche marched away like an offended queen, and sat down on a chair in the hall as if she were enthroning herself upon a pedestal. Mrs Tremayne was in the hall, and the door into the parlour being open, she had heard the conversation. She made no allusion to it at the time, but tried to turn the girl’s thoughts to another topic. Gathering from it, however, the tone of Blanche’s mind, she resolved to give her a lesson which should not eject her roughly from her imaginary pedestal—but make her come down from it of her own accord.
“Poor foolish child!” said Mrs Tremayne to herself. “She has mistaken a rushlight for the sun, and she thinks her horizon wider than that of any one else. She is despising Lysken, at this moment, as a shallow, prosaic character, who cannot enter into the depth of her feelings, and has not attained the height of her experience. And there are heights and depths in Lysken that Blanche will never reach.”
Mrs Tremayne found her opportunity the next evening. She was alone with Blanche in the parlour; and knowing pretty well what every one was doing, she anticipated a quiet half-hour.
Of all the persons to whom Blanche was known, there was not one so well fitted to deal with her in this crisis as the friend in whose hands she had been placed for safety. Thirty years before, Thekla Tremayne had experienced a very dark trial,—had become miserably familiar with the heart-sickness of hope deferred,—during four years when the best beloved of Robin Tremayne had known no certainty whether he was living or dead, but had every reason rather to fear the latter. Compared with a deep, long-tried love like hers, this sentimental fancy over which Blanche was making herself cross and unhappy was almost trivial. But Mrs Tremayne knew that trouble is trouble, if it be based on folly; she thought that she recognised in Blanche, silly though she was in some points, a nobler nature than that of the vain, selfish, indolent mother from whom the daughter derived many of the surface features of her character: and she longed to see that nobler nature rouse itself to work, and sweep away the outward vanity and giddiness. It might be that even this would show her the real hollowness of the gilded world; that this one hour’s journey over the weary land would help to drive her for shelter to the shadow of the great Rock.
Blanche sat on a low stool at Mrs Tremayne’s feet, gazing earnestly into the fire. Neither had spoken for some time, during which the only sounds were the slight movements of Mrs Tremayne as she sat at work, and now and then a heavy sigh from Blanche. When the fifth of these was drawn, the lady gently laid her hand on the girl’s head.