"I wish, Lady Jane, if you insist on my telling your faults, that you would not look so stern."
"Stern—do I?" said Lady Jane; "I did not intend; it was not with you, but myself, that I was angry; not angry either, for my faults have been caused by other people, and to say truth, I don't very much wish to mend them."
"No, Lady Jane," said Beatrix, merrily. "I won't say in cold blood anything disagreeable. I don't say, mind, that I really could tell you any one fault you may fancy you have—but I won't try."
"Well, let us walk round this oval; I'll tell you what you think. You think I am capricious—and so I may appear—but I am not; on the contrary, my likings or aversions are always on good grounds, and last very long. I don't say people always know the grounds, but they know it is not whim; they know—those that have experienced either—that my love and aversion are both very steady. You think I am ill-tempered, too, but I am not—I am isolated and unhappy; but my temper is easy to get on with—and I don't know why I am talking to you," she exclaimed, with a sudden change in her looks and tone, "as if you and I could ever by any possibility become friends. Good-bye, Beatrix; I see your grandmamma beckoning."
So she was—leaning upon the arm of her maid, a wan lank figure—motioning her toward her.
"Coming, grandmamma," cried Beatrix, and smiled, and turning to say a parting word to Lady Jane, she perceived that she was already moving some way off toward the house.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
General Lennox receives a Letter.
Monsieur Varbarriere was charmed with his host this morning. Sir Jekyl spent more than an hour in pointing out and illustrating the principal objects in the panorama that spread before and beneath them as they stood with field-glasses scanning the distance, and a very agreeable showman he made.