The Chevalier's daughter

by Lucy Ellen Guernsey

The next day brought home my lord's son, whom I had not yet seen. He had been travelling abroad for some years, but meeting the news of his sister-in-law's approaching marriage in London, he had hurried home to be present on the occasion. He was a fine, grave, soldierly-looking young man, and very much like Andrew in the face, though taller and with much more of courtly grace in his manner. He was warmly welcomed by all, and especially by Mrs. Bernard. I never saw her soften so much toward any one, and, indeed, I believe he was the only person she ever really loved. He was very polite and kind to me, and I naturally liked him because he was so much like Andrew. He was musical, like all his family, and we sang together a good deal. One morning, as we were practising a song together, Betty peeped into the room. I believe she thought I did not see her, for she slipped out and presently returned with my lady, whom I have no doubt she brought on purpose. They stood listening a few minutes, and then Betty said half under her breath, and with a sigh—

"Ah, my poor brother, I see his cake is dough; but no doubt it is all for the best."

We stopped singing at this, and my lady asked me with some sharpness whether I had been at the school that morning. I told her no, and she at once thought of errands for me, both there and at the village, which would keep me busy all the morning.

"I will walk with you, cousin," said my young lord. "I want to go down to the Cove and see Will Atkins."

Certainly, my lady had not mended matters for herself or me. I got rid of my cousin as soon as I could, telling him that I should be a long time at the school-house, and after that had some poor people to visit. He was rather unwilling to leave me, but I insisted, and he had to yield.

Betty staid two days longer, and then went back to Allinstree, leaving mischief enough behind her. I do believe my lady meant to be just to me, but it was hard to resist the force of Betty's constant and artful insinuations, and she really came to think that I was angling for her step-son. It was not long, of course, before my lord took up the same idea, and what was worst of all, my young lord soon showed that he had no kind of objection to being angled for, and in fact was very ready and even anxious to be caught.

From this time my life at the castle was not at all comfortable. I missed the companionship of Theo, of whom I had grown very fond, though she never filled Rosamond's place to me. I missed my mother more and more. Besides, my conscience was not easy. My lord and lady were good people, as I have said; but the times were times of great laxity. It was the fashion to profess great abhorrence of the Puritans and their ways, and immense devotion to the Church of England, and a good many people showed their devotion by deviating as far as possible from the ways of the precisians, as they were called.

We professed to observe Sunday—that is, we all went to church in the morning, and my lady was very careful to see that all the servants were present at prayers. But my lord yawned over a play or romance all the evening when he had no one to take a hand at cards or tables with, and when we had company staying in the house the Sunday evening was as any other. My young lord had taken up the kind of infidel notions by which, as I said, some young men tried to appear intellectual at a cheap rate, and he had brought down some books of Mr. Hobbes with him which he would fain have had me read; but that I refused. I had been brought up to a strict observance of Sunday as a day of worship and of sacred rest, and at first I was shocked at what I saw. While my mother lived we usually spent our Sunday evenings together in her own room, but after her death, and especially after Dinah went away, I was easily drawn into whatever was going on below stairs, even to playing at tables with my lord, when he had no one else to amuse him.

Then my old pleasure in dreams of wealth and consequence revived. I was something of an heiress, though my income was wholly dependent upon my lord's pleasure or discretion till I should be of age, and so I had plenty of attention. I began again to let the world come into my mind, and, of course, it soon gained a foothold there and ruled for the most part supreme.

Now and then, especially when anything strongly reminded me of my mother, my better self—that self which loved Andrew—came uppermost, but at such times, I suffered so much from the reproaches of conscience, that I strove by every means to stifle its voice. I said to myself that my father and mother had been brought by the circumstances in which they were placed to take a gloomy view of religion and its requirements. That the strictness which they had inculcated was not needful at present, and that it tended (a favorite argument this with the devil) to make religion unamiable. That a man or woman might be a Christian and yet allow themselves many diversions which the stricter sort denied.