Accordingly, the young lady “slipped on her things” as rapidly as she could, and, having done so, crept stealthily up to her place of confinement. Then it struck her that she would open the window, and just let Wewitz know that she was already in the linen-room, and, what was more, that she wasn’t breaking her heart about it either, by singing over that lovely—
“Tyrant! soon I’ll burst thy chains.”
To tell the truth, too, though Miss Chutney did not dare confess as much to herself, and would doubtlessly have shrieked had any one ventured to hint as much to her—the young lady had a secret wish to let the kind French gentleman know that she was still incarcerated at the top of the house.
Miss Chutney had just got to “chains,” and was inwardly congratulating herself on the excellent quality of her lower notes that morning, when the head of M. le Comte de Sanschemise, done up in a Bandana silk neckerchief, bobbed suddenly out of the best bed-room window.
The head of Miss Chutney bobbed as suddenly in; and then she went through the same course of timid doubts and fears as she had indulged in on the preceding day. Again she felt satisfied that the Count would fancy she had commenced singing only to attract his attention; again she asked herself, for about the hundredth time, “What ever would he think of her?” and again her girlish reveries were put to flight by the appearance of the fishing-rod, which the Count used as the postal arrangement for “dropping her a line.”
The billet that it now conveyed was, if possible, penned in a more superlative strain than those of the preceding day, and Miss Chutney, after having read it, her ears burning with her blushes the while, scribbled a hasty reply with the pencil that accompanied it—thanking the Count for his tender inquiries, saying she was afraid she was unworthy of the high eulogiums he was kind enough to heap upon her, and informing him that she was undergoing a short term of solitary confinement, and bread and water, for having been imprudent enough to permit him to secrete himself in the music-room during the absence of her schoolmistress.
The reply had not been despatched many minutes, when the piscatorial post brought back a second communication from the Count, and this time it bore substantial proofs of the Frenchman’s sympathy for the tender prisoner, for attached to one of the hooks that dangled at the end of the line was a petit pain, while hanging to another was a bunch of grapes. The bread and fruit alone would have been sufficient to make a deep and lasting impression on the very impressionable Miss Chutney, even had they been unaccompanied by any verbal expression of commiseration or attachment; but when she found, on breaking the roll in two, a letter secreted in the crumb, vowing everlasting affection, and protesting that he would be her slave for life if she would but fly with him to La belle France, her delight knew no bounds.
Miss Chutney had only just finished perusing the proposal, when she heard the sound of Miss Wewitz’s foot upon the stairs. Hastily dashing the line out of the window, she ran to her accustomed seat on the edge of the inverted clothes-basket, and, pushing the roll and grapes and letter under her apron, sat there, waiting the coming of her tyrant, as calm, and almost as lifeless, as a vegetarian.
Miss Wewitz was lost in astonishment to find Miss Chutney so utterly hardened, as she termed it. However, she had written to her guardian, and the tone of her letter was such, that she felt confidently he would be with them the next day, so Miss Chutney could do as she pleased; from that moment Miss Wewitz washed her hands of her—though she could not help observing that, after the unremitting attention she had paid to her morals, such conduct was a most heart-rending return. With this pathetic sentiment she closed the door, and, having turned the key, descended the stairs with it in her pocket.
Miss Chutney could hardly contain herself for passion when she found that the cross, spiteful old thing, as she termed Miss Wewitz, had really sent for her guardian. She never thought she would have carried matters to that length. She had half a mind to, and it would just serve Miss Wewitz right if she did, accept the French gentleman’s offer, and place herself under his protection. “Then,” she added, exultingly, “how nicely Miss Clever would be caught in her own trap, when Miss Chutney’s guardian did come down, and find that that young lady had eloped with a Frenchman to the Continent. Where would her trumpery hard-earned reputation, that she was always making such a fuss about, be then, she would like to know?—for of course,” continued Miss Chutney to herself, “the news wouldn’t be very long in travelling to all the mothers’ ears, who would be sure to take fright, and leave her without a pupil in the house.”