COLONEL GOLDSWORTHY’S BREACH OF ETIQUETTE.
Mrs. Schwellenberg has become both colder and fiercer. I cannot now even meet her eyes-they are almost terrifying. Nothing upon earth having passed between us, nor the most remote subject of offence having occurred, I have only one thing on which to rest my conjectures, for the cause of this newly-awakened evil spirit, and this is from the gentlemen. They had all of late been so wearied that they could not submit even for a quarter of an hour to her society: they had swallowed a dish of tea and quitted the room all in five minutes, and Colonel Goldsworthy in particular, when without any companion in his waiting, had actually always fallen asleep, even during that short interval, or at least shut his eyes, to save himself the toil of speaking.
This she brooked very ill, but I was esteemed innocent, and therefore made, occasionally, the confidant of her complaints. But lately, that she has been ill, and kept upstairs every night, she has always desired me to come to her as soon as tea was over, which, she observed, “need not keep me five minutes.” On the contrary, however, the tea is now at least an hour, and often more.
I have been constantly received with reproaches for not coming sooner, and compelled to declare I had not been sooner at liberty. This has occasioned a deep and visible resentment, all against them, yet vented upon me, not in acknowledged displeasure—pride there interfered—but in constant ill-humour, ill-breeding, and ill-will.
At length, however, she has broken out into one inquiry, which, if favourably answered, might have appeased all; but truth was too strongly in the way. A few evenings after her confinement she very gravely said, “Colonel Goldsworthy always sleeps with me! sleeps he with you the same?”
In the midst of all my irksome discomfort, it was with difficulty I could keep my countenance at this question, which I was forced to negative.
The next evening she repeated it. “Vell, sleeps he yet with you—Colonel Goldsworthy?”
“Not yet, ma’am,” I hesitatingly answered.
“O! ver vell! he will sleep with nobody but me! O, i von’t come down.”