On the red-papered walls, smoky-looking oil pictures in tarnished frames, one or two yellow samplers, worked by dead and gone school-girls on the table wax flowers, Berlin wool mats, and velvet-bound Books of Beauty, from whose faded pages simpered large-eyed beauties of the Dudu type; on the floor treacherous footstools, always in the way, and a long bead-worked cushion, elevated on six square mahogany legs, in front of the brass fender. Here and there gaudy porcelain jars filled with withered rose-leaves and dried lavender, which gave forth a faint, dreamy odour, redolent of bygone days and vanished summers.
Surrounded by all this faded splendour, in a straight-backed chair placed by the fire-side, her feet resting on a foot-stool, and constantly knitting, sat Miss Angelica Corbin, better known to her friends and relations as Aunt Jelly.
Tall, stiff and commanding, with rigid features, cold grey eyes, iron-grey hair, always dressed in the same kind of silken slate-coloured gown, with a dainty lace apron, lace cap, China crape shawl on her shoulders, lisle thread mittens, and old-fashioned rings on her withered hands, she never changed in the smallest degree.
Her father had been a very wealthy man, connected with the H.E.I.C.S., and on his death left his property equally divided between his three daughters, Jane, Angelica, and Marian, the first and the last of whom married respectively Sir Frederick Errington and Mr. Martin Gartney. Both sisters and their husbands had long since departed this life, leaving Guy Errington and Eustace Gartney, who thus stood in the relation of nephews to Miss Corbin.
That lady had never married, which did not seem strange to those who knew her at present, but without doubt she must have been a handsome woman in her youth, and presumably had had her romance, like the rest of her sex. As a matter of fact, she had been engaged to marry Harry Sheldon, the father of her ward, but owing to some misunderstanding, an explanation of which was forbidden by the pride of both, they separated, and Sheldon went out to seek his fortune in Australia, where in due course he married Miss Macjean, and Miss Corbin, devoting herself to perpetual maidenhood, had removed to Delphson Square, where she had remained ever since.
Having a handsome income well invested in the Funds, Miss Corbin lived in excellent albeit old-fashioned style, and, in spite of her apparent hardness and brusque manner, was not an ungenerous woman. When her old lover, dying in Australia, sent home his orphan child to her guardianship, she had promptly accepted the charge, and loved the girl for the sake of that dead and buried romance which was still fresh in her heart. To Victoria she was strict but kind, and the presence of this bright young girl made a pleasant variety in her dull, methodical life, although she never, by word or deed, betrayed such a weakness.
Hard she undoubtedly was, and but little given to sentimental feelings, which was a great grief to her companion, Miss Minnie Pelch, who was tender-hearted in the extreme, and had oceans of tears on every possible occasion, from a wedding to a funeral.
Miss Pelch was a weak, soulful creature, the daughter of a clergyman who had been curate at Denfield, a village near Errington Hall. The Rev. Pelch was a widower, and his sole offspring was the fair Minnie, but having only a small income, he saved nothing: so when he died she was left destitute, with a doubtful future before her. She had not enough brains for a governess, no talents except a pretty taste in poetry, which was not a marketable commodity, and no beauty to attract marriageable young men, so Minnie wept over the mistake of having been born, and Heaven only knows what would have become of her had not Miss Corbin, like a kind-hearted vulture, swooped down on the poor creature and taken her up to London as her companion.
So Minnie was provided for by brusque Aunt Jelly, although no one ever knew what a trial she was to that sensible old lady, for Miss Pelch was one of those exasperatingly limp creatures who always pose as martyrs, and shed tears at the least thing.
Aunt Jelly was not unkind by nature, but sometimes the tearful Minnie was too much for her endurance, and if she could have got rid of her she certainly would have had small hesitation in doing so. But there was no chance of this coming to pass, as Minnie was one of those meek creatures who rest where they are thrown, so Miss Corbin, regarding her as a necessary cross, did the best she could to put up with her tears, her milk-and-water conversation and her longings after fame.