As she spoke she held out her hand to Coverdale, who, after a moment’s hesitation, and with a slight accession of colour, just touched and immediately relinquished it, saying, in a cold but polite tone of voice—
“Do you know whether the Muirs are in England now, Miss Crofton?”
As the person addressed remarked his look and tone, she pressed her lips together so forcibly that every trace of red vanished from them; but repressing all other sign of emotion, she replied to his question. Then taking a seat next Alice, she began cultivating her good graces with a degree of tact and talent which evinced her powers of shining in society, and deserved more success than it appeared to meet with.
Arabella Crofton was a handsome woman of thirty, looking younger than her age. She was tall, and her figure was fully developed without being actually embonpoint. Her hands and feet, although proportioned to her height, were beautifully modelled, and the former unusually white and soft. In feature she resembled Kate, so much so that she had more than once been mistaken for her former pupil’s elder sister; but the expression of the two faces was totally dissimilar. In Kate Crane a fiery passionate nature was kept under control by an equally strong degree of pride, and an amount of self-respect which served her in place of a higher principle; in Arabella Crofton lay concealed even a greater depth of passion, but its sole antagonist was an intellect keen, strong, and acute, though not of the highest order, and a determination of will and fixity of purpose which, while it led her straight towards the object she sought, rendered her somewhat unscrupulous as to the means by which it was to be attained; and as the mind usually writes itself more or less legibly on the countenance, so did the expression differ in Kate and her late governess. Still Miss Crofton’s was a face to attract and rivet attention, a face which exercised a species of fascination over those who beheld it, so peculiar that it is not easy to define it. As you gazed upon it, you felt that you were in the presence of an intelligence of no common order, but of whose nature, hopes, fears, wishes, and designs, you were entirely ignorant—nay, in regard to which you could not decide whether the good or evil principle predominated. In this sense of power with which she impressed others, together with the uncertainty how it might be directed, lay the secret of much of Arabella Crofton’e influence. Alice, not being metaphysical, did not attempt to define the sensations with which her new acquaintance inspired her; had she done so, it might have appeared that she had formed much the same estimate of her manner and appearance as that with which we have furnished the reader. But if Alice did not moralize, she arrived at strong and definite conclusions without that process, for before she had been half an hour in Miss Crofton’s company, she felt morally convinced that she should hate her, and that it would turn out that the ci-devant governess either had done, or was about to do, something which would completely account for and justify this sudden animosity.
During dinner, a note arrived from Lord Alfred Courtland, offering Alice and Harry seats in his opera-box, which offer, after a few polite speeches to and from Mr. Crane, in his (in?) capacity as master of the house, was accepted. As they drove to the theatre, the following conversation passed between the husband and wife, the lady of course beginning it.
“What a detestable woman that Miss Crofton is! I’m sure I shall never be able to endure her. I see now where Kate’s faults came from. Miss Crofton has taught her to be worldly-minded, and ambitious, and all sorts of horrid things which she never used to be; and the creature is an old acquaintance of yours, too! Did you know her well—intimately?”
“Eh? yes! I saw a good deal of her at one time. How slow this fellow drives, we shall lose the overture!” was Harry’s reply, which, if he intended thereby to change the subject of the conversation, proved a dead failure, for Alice continued:—
“Oh! then you are not mere acquaintances, as she tried to make out! I thought she wasn’t speaking the truth. Well, and did you like her?—I dare say you did, for I feel sure she was in love with you; indeed I think she is still, by the way she casts down those great rolling eyes of hers whenever you say a word to her. I declare I feel quite jealous.”
Coverdale paused for a moment, ere he replied: “My dear Alice, you speak thoughtlessly, but you do not know how such remarks annoy me—faults I have, and more serious, ones than until lately I was at all aware of; but to suppose that since I first saw you, I have ever devoted one minute’s thought to any other woman breathing, would be to do me a foul injustice.” Alice perceived, from his manner of speaking, that her vague suspicions had really pained him, and having no other ground for them but an instinct which she confessed to herself to be utterly unsanctioned by reason, she determined to confess her sin and obtain absolution. This is in many cases a tedious and difficult operation, but when individuals are on those easy and agreeable terms which sometimes last so long as a year after marriage, the process becomes greatly facilitated. Thus, by a little graceful and appropriate pantomime, Alice caused it to be understood that she felt deeply penitent, and in a state of mental self-accusation only to be allayed by a remedy consisting (as some light-minded jester has phrased it), like a sermon, of “two heads and an application.” When this specific for female grief had been duly administered by Harry, peace was for the time restored, and the evening passed away most harmoniously in every sense of the word.