“And what was that, if she would deign to forgive his importunity?”
“She had met a soldier at her country-house.”
It was not delicate, it was characteristic, it was the sort of thing only my Lady Barbara could say; but Captain Grantley would have burnt his leg rather than it should have been unsaid. This was but the first of many speeches that astonished and delighted him. To-night the lady was never more certain of herself, nor was the Captain ever less so. Inch by inch the unwilling victim was lured to his doom.
Presently a servant brought in his supper on a tray that gleamed with damask and silver dishes. Under her ladyship’s permission he ate and drank, but every minute his gaze was straying to his dangerous companion, whose little shoes were toasting on the hearth. Many moments of that depressing day his mind had been for her. Some bright, brave gesture jumped up from his bosom to his eyes; a word, a smile, a tone, her charming indignation, her lovely anger against himself and politics, her frank impertinence, her amazing candour, and above all, her apartness from the common herd of women—elegant but featureless. To be explicit, that was how she held poor man. A woman quite unlike her sisters, yet as feminine as anything that ever fibbed and trailed a petticoat. The lords of creation mostly deign to take us women to themselves the moment they can be persuaded that they have caught an entirely new variety. The principle is similar to the one we work upon when we wear a new brocade, or the newest hat with feathers on. If one meets Mrs. Araminta flaunting in the same, one pulls it off and promptly, and bestows it on one’s maid. And had my Lady Barbara reminded Captain Grantley, though never so remotely, of the worthy lady of his friend, Major Blunder of the Blues, or of any other female whatsoever, he would have seen her at the devil rather than he would have wooed her, and callow Cornet Johnson could have had her for the asking. But a certain originality of artifice grafted on a spontaneity of nature, and Bab Gossiter contrived to be just herself, and not to be mistaken for any other creature, and was coveted accordingly by the vanity of every bachelor in the town of London.
Thus with Captain Grantley. In his time the dear man had had a large experience of women. Some, maybe, he had seen more statuesque, more goddesslike, more rigidly and correctly beautiful, yet never one quite so much herself, so entirely herself, so open yet so elusive, so quick, so captivating. As the evening went, as the board was cleared, and the Captain’s words grew warmer, their talk competed in its energy with the animated winds that struck the windows.
“Now, sir, tell me of these barbarous politics,” she commanded, like one who only knows obedience.
“Nay, dear lady, tell me of your own,” says he.
Strange how she was fired by his words! He saw her colour glow and burn, and the lamps in her eyes were lit.
“My father is my politics,” says she.
The Captain could not have recoiled more palpably had a live coal cracked out of the blaze and dropped upon his hand.