CHAPTER IX. THRUST AND COUNTER-THRUST.
I CANNOT, for my own part, at all agree with the depreciatory expressions used by Mistress Forest with respect to Miss Rose Aynton's personal appearance. “What Master Walter could have seen in her,” &c., it was easy enough for anybody else to see who was not of her own sex. A magnificent figure, masses of silken hair that, when unbound, would ripple almost to her dainty feet, and a countenance “bright as light, and clear as wind;” and indeed this latter was too keen and sharply cut for my taste. The sort of expression which one likes to see in one's lawyer, does not so well become the object of our heart's affections. Of course, there was nothing of steel about Miss Rose, except what might have been in her crinoline; but I never saw man or woman who gave me so much the idea of being armed cap-à-pied; she seemed to be equipped in a complete Milan suit of proof, impregnable, invulnerable. Like Le Noir Fainéant in Ivanhoe, she never attacked anybody, although my Lady fancied she had recently detected signs of aggression about her; and those who knew her best avoided putting the temptation in her way. But when she entered her hostess's boudoir by invitation, upon that particular morning, she looked not only, as usual, on her guard; there was also a certain slumbrous fire in her dark eyes, which betokened onslaught—the initiative of battle. My Lady herself remarked it, not without pity. “How little is this poor lost creature aware,” thought she, “that I know all.”
But she was quite wrong in this. Miss Rose had almost gathered the truth from the trembling fingers and frightened manner of her tiring-maid that morning; and the thing had been quite confirmed to her by the malicious triumph with which Mary Forest had delivered her mistress's request to see her in the boudoir upon very particular business.
“Will you please to sit down, Miss Aynton?”
Yes, it was so. The secret was out. Not even a morning salutation from her friend and hostess; and the hand only outstretched to point her out a chair at the other extremity of the room. “Before proceeding with what I have to say,” began my Lady, “I wish to know whether your aunt is in town.”
“I believe so, Lady Lisgard; I think she has come back from Leamington—although I have not heard from her for the last two days.”
“That is well. When I hinted, yesterday morning, that it would be better for you to return to London, I was unaware of the necessity for your departure from this roof at once—immediately—and for ever.”
“Indeed!” Not a muscle moved: confident in the goodness, if not of her cause, at least of her Milan suit; conscious, too, of the possession of a Damascus poniard, undreamed of by the foe, and admirable for close encounters, her right hand nervously opened and shut as though to clutch the handle—that was all.
“You have disgraced this house and me: yourself and your sex.”