She curtseyed with propriety.
“Sir, the housekeeper will show you your usual chamber. Will you please enter?”
He did so, and saw the shining locks dim in the dark old hall; and there the servants took possession of him, and she went winding slowly up the stair. His curiosity was riveted on her.
She appeared at the table for dinner, evidently forgiven, very plainly dressed in a clear white dimity with blue ribbons, her hair turned back from the forehead, disclosing the loveliest white brow, the undergrowth of auburn advancing upon it in ripples, as when the tide comes in softly. The mass was supported with a white fillet bound about the head Greek fashion; and yet what could such a girl know of the goddesses who in marble or more perishable clay kept the connoisseur company in his London abode? He, however, recognized the touch and marvelled.
She looked down the table at Greville and smiled discreetly, but perhaps saw more than the quick glance indicated. A handsome man with cold, neatly-chiselled features, we have him still to the life in fine mezzotint, the eyes somewhat too deep and eager to convince the beholder, and a little of his scrutinizing, valuing air about it for all; the hair clubbed and powdered—a man of noble breeding impossible to pass for plebeian in a revolution if it were to save his life. A self-possessed and dignified young man of thirty. Four other men were present, including Sir Harry, and certainly this was the pick of the basket. Fair Emma knew it, as women know all such lore, instinctively, although for certain her life had not been passed with Grevilles.
“He looks like a great lord!” she thinks, trying to recall how fish should be eaten in elegant company. “No knife—a fork and a crust?—yes, that’s it.”
She talked little at dinner, smiling slightly when addressed, and eating little also. The ladies of Mr. Greville’s society would trifle with their food, and push it aside with hand disdainful. She had fortified herself for this display by a huge hunch of cake upstairs and a bowl of creamy milk, for those roses and lilies were not nurtured on air.
When the covers were removed, Sir Harry, now warm and generous with wine, gave the gentlemen a running account of the tussle, and demanded of Greville to bear witness whether Mrs. Hart hadn’t rode like a damned jockey, and whether a man could keep up anger against a girl that showed such spunk, for all she was a disobedient little vixen that might think herself lucky she had a whole bone in her skin that night.
Greville assented—the finest sight he had seen, says he, and with Sir Harry’s pardon might he propose they drink Mrs. Hart’s very good health on it?—which they accordingly did with three times three, and the heroine modestly retired to make tea in the drawing-room with Mrs. Apton, the housekeeper, for company until the men lurched in, and Mrs. Apton scuttled off.
Lurched, all but Greville. He was as cool as a cucumber, for the situation was too good to be misted with the fumes of wine. Moreover, he was never one to heat his brain for nothing though he could take his glass like a gentleman. He placed himself opposite Emma, across the broad hearth, that he might study her on the sly. Sir Harry called on her for a song, and the dilettante in Greville prepared to be displeased with all but the sight of those beautiful lips opening their portals to melody. What could be expected?—the peacock, the pheasant, have voices worse than the scritch of the jay, and beauty is too often peacock-toned. She sang without accompaniment, if it be not Sir Harry’s snores half way through, a ballad such as village pedlars will not have forgotten, but the words pleasing, the tune simple and striking; “The Raggle-taggle Gipsies, O!” and gave it with a fine dash and spirit.