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A NEW KINSMAN
Young Mrs. Loring was making her way slowly at Stoke Revel Manor, and Mrs. de Tracy, though never affectionate, treated her with a little less indifference as the days went on. “The Admiral’s niece is a lady,” she admitted to herself privately; “not perhaps the highest type of English lady; that, considering her mixed ancestry and American education, would be too much to expect; but in the broad, general meaning of the word, unmistakably a lady!”
Mrs. Benson, though not melting outwardly as yet, held more lenient views still with regard to the American guest. Bates, the butler, was elderly, and severely Church of England; his knowledge of widows was confined to the type ably represented by his mistress and he regarded young Mrs. Loring 114 as inclined to be “flighty.” The footman, who was entirely under the butler’s thumb in mundane matters, had fallen into the habit of sharing his opinions, and while agreeing in the general feeling of flightiness, declared boldly that the lady in question gave a certain “style” to the dinner-table that it had lacked before her advent.
For a helpless victim, however, a slave bound in fetters of steel, one would have to know Cummins, the under housemaid, who lighted Mrs. Loring’s fire night and morning. She was young, shy, country bred, and new to service. When Mrs. Benson sent her to the guest’s room at eight o’clock on the morning after her arrival she stopped outside the door in a panic of fear.
“Come in!” called a cheerful voice. “Come in!”
Cummins entered, bearing her box with brush and cloth and kindlings. To her further embarrassment Mrs. Loring was sitting up in bed with an ermine coat on, over which 115 her bright hair fell in picturesque disorder. She had brought the coat for theatre and opera, but as these attractions were lacking at Stoke Revel and as life there was, to her, one prolonged Polar expedition, with dashes farthest north morning and evening, she had diverted it to practical uses.
“Make me a quick fire please, a big fire, a hot fire,” she begged, “or I shall be late for breakfast; I never can step into that tin tub till the ice is melted.”
“There’s no ice in it, ma’am,” expostulated Cummins gently, with the voice of a wood dove.
“You can’t see it because you’re English,” said the strange lady, “but I can see it and feel it. Oh, you make such a good fire! What is your name, please?”