“Go to—seventeen!” echoed Rachel.
“Well-a-day! What can the lass do with them all?” wondered Sir Thomas.
“Dear hearts! Ye would not see an earl’s daughter low and mean?” interposed Lady Enville.
“If this Gertrude be not so, Orige,—at the least in her heart,—then is Jennet a false speaker, and mine ears have bewrayed me, belike. Methinks a woman of good breeding might leave swearing and foul talk to the men, and be none the worse for the same: nor see I good cause wherefore she should order her sisters like so many Barbary slaves.”
“Ay so!—that marketh her high degree,” said Lady Enville.
“I wis not, Orige, how Gertrude gat her degree, nor her father afore her,” answered Rachel: “but this I will tell thee—that if one of the ‘beggarly craftsmen’ that Jack loveth to snort at, should allow him, before me, in such talk as I have heard of her, I would call on Sim to put him forth with no more ado. Take my word for it, she cometh of no old nor honourable stock, but is of low degree in very truth, if the truth were known.”
Rachel’s instinct was right. Lady Gertrude’s father was a parvenu, of very mean extraction. Her great-uncle had made the family fortune, partly in trade, but mostly by petty peculations; and her father, who had attracted the Queen’s eye when a young lawyer, had been rapidly promoted through the minor grades of nobility, until he had reached his present standing. Gertrude was not noble in respect of anything but her title.
Lady Enville, with a smile which was half amusement and half contempt, rose and retired to her boudoir. Sir Thomas and Rachel sat still by the hall fire, both deeply meditating: the former with his head thrown back, gazing—without seeing them—at the shields painted on the ceiling; while the latter leaned forward towards the fire, resting her chin on both hands.
“What saidst, Tom?” asked Rachel in a dreamy voice.
“I spake not to know it, good Sister: but have what I said, an’ thou so wilt. I was thinking on that word of Paul—‘Not many noble are called.’ I thought, Rachel, how far it were better to be amongst the called of God, than to be of the noble.”