The Honourable Mrs. Algernon Ancram Errington sat on a sofa in the principal drawing-room, with a discontented expression of countenance, superciliously surveying the company through her eye-glass, and asking where Algernon was, if he were absent from her side for five minutes. Castalia was looking in better health than when we first had the honour of making her acquaintance. She had grown a trifle stouter—or less lean. Her sojourn in Westmoreland had been more favourable to her looks than the fatigues of a London season, which, under other circumstances, she would have been undergoing. Happiness is said to be a great beautifier. And it was to be supposed that Castalia, having married the man of her heart, was happy. But yet the fretful creases had not vanished from her face; and there was even a more suspicious watchfulness in her bright, deeply-set eyes than formerly.
Perhaps it may be well to record a few of the various verdicts passed on the bride's manners and appearance by our Whitford friends after that first evening. Possibly an impartial judgment may be formed from them; but it will be seen that opinions were strongly conflicting.
Said Dr. Bodkin to his wife, "What can the boy have been thinking of to marry that woman? A sickly, faded, fretful-looking person, nearly ten years his senior! I can forgive a generous mistake, but not a mean one. If he had run away with Ally Dockett from her boarding-school, it would, no doubt, have been a misfortune, but—I don't know that one would have loved him much the less!"
"Oh, doctor!"
"I am not counselling young gentlemen to run away with young ladies from boarding-schools, my dear. But—I'm afraid this has been a marriage wholly of interest and ambition on his side. Ah! I hoped better things of Errington." And the doctor went on shaking his head for full a minute.
Said Mrs. Smith to Mrs. Dockett, "What do you think of the bride?" Said Mrs. Dockett to Mrs. Smith, "A stuck-up, unpleasant little thing! And I do wish somebody would tell her to keep her gown on her shoulders. I assure you, if I were to see my Ally half undressed in that fashion, I should box her ears. And Ally has a very pretty pair of shoulders, though I say it. She is not a bag of bones, like Mrs. Algernon, at all events."
Said Miss Chubb to her old woman servant, "Well, the Honourable Mrs. Algernon Errington is very distangy looking, Martha. That's a French word that means—means out of the common, aristocratic, you know. Very distangy, certainly! But she lacks sentiment, in my opinion. And her outline is very sharp, Martha. I prefer a rounder contour, both of face and figure. Some of the ladies found fault with her because of her low dress. But that—as I happen to know—is quite the custom with our upper classes in town. Mrs. Figgins's—wife of the Bishop of Plumbunn, you know, Martha—Mrs. Figgins's sister, who married Sir William Wick, of the Honourable Company of Tallow Chandlers, I believe—that's a kind of City society for dining sumptuously, Martha; you mustn't suppose it has anything to do with selling tallow candles! Well, Lady Wick sat down to dinner in low, every day of her life!"
Mr. Diamond and young Pawkins walked a little way together from the doctor's house to the "Blue Bell" inn. The master of Pudcombe Hall, on attempting to resume his acquaintance with the bride, had been received with scant courtesy. But this was not so much because Castalia intended to be specially uncivil to him, as because at that moment it happened, unfortunately, that she saw her husband in a distant part of the room talking to Minnie Bodkin with an air of animation.
"By Jove!" cried the ingenuous Pawkins, "I don't envy Errington. His wife looks so uncommon ill-tempered, and turns up her honourable nose at everybody."
"She does not turn up her nose at him," returned Diamond. "And Errington will not be over sensitive on behalf of his friends."