Juliet, therefore, could but determine to watch the weak, if not willing victim, while yet under the same roof; and openly, before she quitted it, to reveal the threatening danger to Miss Matson.
CHAPTER XLVI
The first Sunday that Juliet passed in this new situation, nearly robbed her of the good will of the whole of the little community to which she belonged. It was the only day in the week in which the young work-women were allowed some hours for recreation; they considered it, therefore, as rightfully dedicated, after the church-service, to amusement with one another; and Juliet, in refusing to join in a custom which they held to be the basis of their freedom and happiness, appeared to them an unsocial and haughty innovator. Yet neither wearying remonstrances, nor persecuting persuasions, could prevail upon her to parade with them upon the Steyne; to stroll with them by the sea-side; to ramble upon the Downs; or to form a party for Shoreham, or Devil's Dyke.
Evil is so relative, that the same chamber, the lonely sadness of which, since her privation of Gabriella, had become nearly insupportable to her, was now, from a new contrast, almost all that she immediately coveted. The bustle, the fatigue, the obtrusion of new faces, the spirit of petty intrigue, and the eternal clang of tongues, which she had to endure in the shop, made quiet, even in its most uninteresting dulness, desirable and consoling.
To approach herself, as nearly as might be in her power, to the loved society which she had lost, she destined this only interval of peace and leisure, to her pen and Gabriella; and such was her employment, when the sound of slow steps, upon the stairs, followed by a gentle tap at her door, at once interrupted and surprised her. Miss Matson and her maids, as well as her work-women, were spending their Sabbath abroad; and a shop-man was left to take care of the house. The tap, however, was repeated, and, obeying its call, Juliet beheld Sir Jaspar Herrington, the gouty old Baronet.
The expression of her countenance immediately demanded explanation, if not apology, as she stepped forward upon the landing-place, to make clear that she should not receive him in her apartment.
His keen eye read her meaning, though, affecting not to perceive it, he pleasantly said, 'How? immured in your chamber? and of a gala day?'
The recollection of the essential, however forced obligation, which she owed to him, for her deliverance from the persecution of Miss Bydel, soon dissipated her first impression in his disfavour, and she quietly answered that she went very little abroad: but when she would have enquired into his business, 'You can refuse yourself, then,' he cried, pretending not to hear her, 'the honour—or pleasure, which shall we call it? of sharing in the gaieties of your fair fellow-votaries to the needle? I suspected you of this self-denial. I had a secret presentiment that you would be insensible to the fluttering joys of your sister spinsters. How did I divine you so well? What is it you have about you that sets one's imagination so to work?'