Loveday's history

by Lucy Ellen Guernsey

I simply courtesied.

"How do you know whether I was talking familiarly or not?" demanded Lady Frances, saucily enough. "Were you at your old trick of eavesdropping?"

The gouvernante, for such she was, colored through all her rouge and powder, but she deigned no reply, save to bid Lady Frances follow her. But I think she kept her not long, for when I went to my mistress, I found Lady Frances kneeling by her side, playing with the tassels of her girdle and coaxingly preferring some request.

"So, Mistress Corbet, what mischief have you and this child been hatching up between you?" asked her Grace. "Here she is begging and beseeching that you may give her lessons, she having, as she says, fallen in love with your playing. What say you? Will you take such a troublesome office upon yourself as the instruction of a perverse child?" she added, pulling her step-daughter's ear.

I told her I would willingly give Lady Frances all the help in my power if her Grace could spare me the time.

"Well, well, my Frances, we will talk to your father, and see what he has to say. But mind, Loveday, I am to have you to read aloud to me, and attend me on the water all the same. 'Tis sheer cruelty to take poor Mandeville into a boat."

I could not but think my time was likely to be fully occupied, but I never was afraid of work.

By degrees, I drifted more and more into the position of governess to my Lady Frances. My Lady Challoner, who had never got on well with her charge—I never saw the human being that liked her—went away, and another elderly lady, Mrs. Wardour, the widow of a brave soldier, took her place. She was a very discreet lady, who knew well how to control herself, and who soon won the respect of her charge. Lady Frances was docile enough with her, and soon learned to be ashamed of the tempest of passionate anger which I used to think Lady Challoner took delight in provoking, that she might have whereof to complain to the girl's father. My Lady Frances was different from many high-tempered persons in this, that she did not always think some one else was to blame for her outbreaks, but laid the fault where it belonged, on her own choleric temper. She and I got on very well, and she improved so fast that it was a pleasure to teach her.

I still read to her Grace whenever she was at home of an evening, and attended her in her excursions upon the river, but I was excused from standing behind her chair, and another gentlewoman took my place. It was on our return from one of these water excursions that an event took place of which we thought little at the time, but which was destined to have important consequences for us both. We had landed at our usual place, when we saw a couple of burly, rude water-men threatening and bullying a pale man in black, who looked like a scholar of some sort. Even as we came up, one of them struck him a blow which staggered and nearly knocked him down.

"Shame, shame!" rang out the dear voice of the Duchess, who was not one of those over-prudent people who can never do a generous action without thinking about it till the occasion is past. "Is that the way for Englishmen to treat a stranger and a poor man? Let him alone, you brute!"