It needs not to say the sort of effect which the tone of this letter produced on a mind in itself delicate and unsunned as the bells of the valley lily, and filled to overflowing with the image of the noble Hubert. Yet there were other feelings that mingled with this deep disgust; she pitied her aunt Barnaby, and could any decent or womanly exertion have done her good, or even pleasure, she would not have shrunk from making it. But what she asked was beyond her power to perform; and, moreover, she had promised Colonel Hubert not to leave the house. How dear to her was the recollection of this injunction!... how delightful the idea that his care and his commands protected her from the horrors of such a progress as that sketched out by her aunt Barnaby. To obey her was therefore altogether out of the question; but she sat down to write to her, and endeavoured to soften her refusal by pleading her terror of the streets at any hour, and her total want of strength and courage to undertake such an expedition; adding, that she supposed by her account there could be no doubt of their meeting in Half-Moon Street on the morrow.
But the morrow and its morrow came, without bringing Mrs. Barnaby. In fact, writ after writ had poured in upon her, but hoping still to evade those yet to come, she only furnished herself with what each one required, and so prolonged her imprisonment to the end of the week. Her indignation at Agnes's refusal to come to her was excessive, and she answered her letter by a vehement declaration that she would never again inhabit the same house with her. This last epistle ended thus:—
"If you don't wish to be turned neck and heels into the street the moment I return, look out for a nursery-maid's or a kitchen-maid's place if you will ... only take care never to let me set eyes upon you again. Ungrateful wretch!... What is Morrison's ingratitude to yours? For nearly seven months you have eaten at my cost, been lodged at my cost, travelled at my cost, ay, and been clothed at my cost too. And what is the return?... I am in prison for debts, which, of course, were incurred as much for you as for myself; and you refuse to come to me!... Never let me see you more—never let me hear your name, and never again turn your thoughts or hopes to your for ever offended aunt,
"Martha Barnaby."
Little as Agnes wished to continue under the protection of Mrs. Barnaby, this peremptory dismissal was exceedingly embarrassing. She had declined immediately accepting the invitation of Lady Elizabeth in a manner that made her very averse to throwing herself upon it, till a positive refusal of assistance from her aunt Compton obliged her to do so; and being absolutely penniless (excepting inasmuch as she was entrusted with the key that secured the widow's small stock of ready money), her only mode of not undergoing, to the letter, the sentence which condemned her to wander in the streets, was remaining where she was till she received an answer from Miss Compton.
It is certain that she submitted to thus seizing upon hospitality with the strong hand the more readily, as by doing so she was enabled to obey the parting injunction of Colonel Hubert; and bracing her courage to the meeting that must take place should Mrs. Barnaby's release precede her own, she suffered the heavy interval of doubt to steal away with as little of the feverish restlessness of impatience as possible.
CHAPTER VI.
AGNES RECEIVES ANOTHER UNEXPECTED VISIT.—MRS. BARNABY RETURNS TO HER LODGINGS AND CATCHES THE VISITER THERE.
The seven or eight months elapsed since the reader parted from Miss Compton, passed not over the head of the secluded spinster as lightly as the years which had gone before ... for her conscience was not quite at rest. For some time the vehemence of the indignation and disgust excited by Mrs. Barnaby, during their last interview, sustained her spirits, much as a potent but noxious dram might have done; and during this time the fact of Agnes being her inmate and companion, was quite sufficient to communicate such a degree of contamination to her, as made the choleric old lady turn from all thought of her with most petulant dislike. The letter of Mrs. Barnaby, demanding an allowance for Agnes, reached her just when all this violence was beginning to subside, and acting like turpentine on an expiring flame, made her anger and hatred rage again with greater fury than ever. This demand was refused, as we have seen, in the harshest manner possible, and the writing this insulting negative was a considerable relief to the spinster's feelings. But when this was done, and all intercourse, as it should seem, finally closed between herself and the only human being concerning whom she was capable of feeling any lively interest, her anger drooped and faded, and her health and spirits drooped and faded too. She remembered, when it was too late, that it was not Agnes's fault that she was living with Mrs. Barnaby; and conscience told her, that if she had come forward, as she might and ought to have done, at the time of her brother's death, the poor child might have been saved from the chance of any moral resemblance to the object of her aversion, however much she might unhappily inherit the detestable Wisett beauty. Then, too, came the remembrance of the beautiful vision, whose caresses she had rejected when irritated almost to madness by the tauntings of Mrs. Barnaby; and the idea that the punishment allotted to her in this world for this flagrant act of injustice, was the being doomed never to behold that fair young creature more, lay with a daily increasing weight of melancholy on her spirits.
It was on the afternoon of a fine September day that the letter of Agnes reached her. As usual, she was sitting in her bower, and her flowers bloomed and her bees hummed about her as heretofore, but the sprightly black eye that used to watch them was greatly dimmed. She had almost wholly lost her relish for works of fiction, and reading a daily portion of the Bible, which she had never omitted in her life, was perhaps the only one of all her comfortable habits that remained unchanged.