"I was but saying Madam, that you told me you were expecting company!" replied Amabel.
"Yes, that is true, and I trust we shall give you a little gayer life than you have been leading lately. Is this your waiting-woman, my love?"
"This is Lucy Corbet, my foster-sister, Madam!" replied Amabel. "I thought you had known her as you entertained her at your house in Newcastle."
"Oh!" said Lady Leighton, looking slightly disconcerted, but recovering herself in a moment. "Yes! I was misled by the intimacy which existed between you, into treating her as an equal with yourself—but it must be understood," she added, her eyes growing bright and fierce as I had seen them before—"it must be understood at once, that all that must be at an end. I do not blame you so much as your guardians in France and your father, who allowed such a state of things to grow up, but the young woman must understand that if she remains, it must be as a servant and under my control or that of my housekeeper. Do you hear me, young woman?" Turning to me.
I simply curtsied.
"Very well! I see you can be humble when it suits you. Keep so, and you may find me your friend. Let me see you put on any fine lady airs and you leave this house on the instant!"
I curtsied again. My Cornish blood was boiling but I was determined not to give her any handle against me. Lady Leighton now turned to Amabel, criticised the fashion of her dress and found fault with the arrangement of her hair.
"One would think you had lived in the ark all your life!" said she. "Pray for whom are you wearing all this mourning?"
"For my Aunt Chloe, who died not three months since, madam!" answered Amabel.
"Nonsense, child! Nobody mourns for aunts and uncles nowadays. That kind of thing is gone out. I must see you in colors directly. What a preposterous head. I think, after all, I must put one of my own women about you. I cannot have you looking so like a fright. Corbet, cannot you at least lace up your mistress properly?"