"I'll go with you—shall I?" said Beatrix.
"No, you shan't," answered Lady Jane, rudely.
"And why, Lady Jane?" asked Beatrix, hurt and surprised.
"You shall never visit my room; you are a good little creature. I could have loved you, Beatrix, but now I can't."
"Yet I like you, and you meet me so! why is this?" pleaded Beatrix.
"I can't say, little fool; who ever knows why they like or dislike? I don't. The fault, I suppose, is mine, not yours. I never said it was yours. If you were ever so little wicked," she added, with a strange little laugh, "perhaps I could; but it is not worth talking about," and with a sudden change from this sinister levity to a seriousness which oscillated strangely between cruelty and sadness, she said—
"Beatrix, you like that young man, Mr. Strangways?" Again poor Beatrix blushed, and was about to falter an exculpation and a protest; but Lady Jane silenced it with a grave and resolute "Yes—you like him;" and after a little pause, she added—"Well, if you don't marry him, marry no one else;" and shortly after this, Lady Jane sighed heavily.
This speech of hers was delivered in a way that prevented evasion or girlish hypocrisy, and Beatrix had no answer but that blush which became her so; and dropping her eyes to the ground, she fell into a reverie, from which she was called up by Lady Jane, who said suddenly—
"What can that fat Monsieur Varbarriere be? He looks like Torquemada, the Inquisitor—mysterious, plausible, truculent—what do you think? Don't you fancy he could poison you in an ice or a cup of coffee; or put you into Cardinal Ballue's cage, and smile on you once a year through the bars?"
Beatrix smiled, and looked on the unctuous old gentleman with an indulgent eye, comparatively.