The countenance of my aunt was something to be seen. Rage laid her livid; but I was almost proud to look at her, for was she not bred so properly that she smiled away like anything? She put her teeth hard upon her lips, and so did bar her anger back, and continued in that pleasant face that cooled my blood by three degrees.
“Very well, Barbara,” says she, without the faintest passion, though it had required several seconds to give her this composure, “very well. But if I outlast the century I will not overlook this monstrous conduct. From to-day I disinherit you. And I may say that one portion of my fortune will be diverted into building and endowing a church at St. Giles’s in the Fields; the other portion to provide a sanctuary for needy gentlewomen.”
Somewhere in the middle of the day I thought the hour a chosen one to finish off the Captain. With such an application had I pursued the gallant man the previous evening, and such his frame of mind, that surely he was suffering even now an ecstasy of sweet pain. Another amorous glance or two would certainly complete him and drown his duty in his desperation. These reflections carried me to the library door. On entering I was met by the Captain’s greeting and the presence of an unpropitious third. Corporal Flickers was in an ostentatious occupation of my seat against the fire-place.
“When you are alone, sir, I shall be glad to speak with you,” I said, this being a hint for the dismissal of the Corporal.
“Important business occupies me most unfortunately just now,” the Captain said; and I retired to await his disengagement.
I conceived this to be perhaps the matter of an hour, but never was more faulty in my reckoning. At three o’clock I sent to inquire of his convenience. ’Twas not yet, however, as the Corporal was with him still; moreover, said the Captain, in reply, he was like to be so until far into the evening. At supper-time they were together also. On Emblem looking farther in the matter, she learned that at the request of the Captain the Corporal had been served with food there.
We were discussing this strange affair in the privacy of my boudoir, when Mr. Anthony, whose fund of shrewdness served him in a thousand ways, advanced a theory meriting much consideration.
“Flickers is his bodyguard,” says he. “Grantley knows it’s in your mind to captivate him, and fears you’ll do it too, if you so much as have him to yourself. Flickers is for safety, and you can take my word for that.”
I thought upon this sadly; for if this was so and the coward’s trick was only persevered in, I should be completely foiled, and that blue paper must be in London very soon.
“You are wrong, Prue,” I said, rebelling against my better judgment. “A soldier and a man like Grantley would never have such a cowardice.”