Sir William in reply expressed himself as passionately desirous to see the Renaissance beauty, as he termed her. “Your Emma reads like one of the sumptuous Venetian beauties whose calm and noble lines recall the antique dignity of the great Roman families. May it not be long ere I feast my eyes upon your choice.”
Greville could not acquiesce in the epithet, “calm.” He had met Emma at the office of the Cheshire coach a few days before and had much ado to prevent her flinging her arms about him in public in her glowing delight and enthusiasm. He warded this off, however, until they were in the hackney coach, and there, do what he would, she fell upon his shoulder sobbing and laughing in a breath.
“I knew—I knew at Up Park that something was to come of it. Oh, Greville, I knew you could not be so kind to me for nothing. Sure I was made to serve and love you, and is it really, really true I am to be with you and keep your house? Oh, indeed, you shall never have to complain of me. Every word I speak shall be considered, every action—”
He tried in vain to stem the outflow and finding that impossible submitted with patience for the length of a street and then turned the subject to her journey. Had he sent her an ample supply of money? She felt in her pocket beneath her long cloak and displayed a little, shabby purse with a half guinea and some loose shillings.
“Did I calculate so near as that? I would have sent you more had I known.” He spoke with compunction, looking at the remainder.
“Oh, Greville, you sent nobly; but there was a poor old woman in the coach, going to see her sick son at Greenwich, and a sailor too, and I couldn’t see her want for a meal and a drop of something warm to comfort her poor old heart, and I gave her—”
Greville’s cold eye arrested her. She looked up almost trembling.
“You gave her my money!”—with an awful pause between each word. “A guinea? Emma, you are hopeless. Indeed, I have no hopes of you. A heedless, wasteful girl! When will you consider?”
A pause, her head hanging down like a flower in the rain. Not a word to say for herself.
He relented presently and she revived as quickly as a dog beaten and then received into favour. Eagerly she promised amendment.