She shrugged her shoulders with a contemptuous gesture, and turned away from the glass. But, although she affected to despise her brother's schemes, she was not slow to lend herself to them. She went out that morning, and walked to her milliner's house. There was a long and rather an unpleasant interview between the milliner and her customer, for Lydia Graham had sunk deeper in the mire of debt with every passing year, and it was only by the payment of occasional sums of money on account that she contrived to keep her creditors tolerably quiet.
The result of to-day's interview was the same as usual. Madame Susanne, the milliner, agreed to find some pretty dresses for Miss Graham's Christmas visit—and Miss Graham undertook to pay a large instalment of an unreasonable bill without inspection or objection.
On this snowy Christmas morning Miss Graham stood by the side of her host, dressed in the stylish walking costume of dark gray poplin, and with her glowing face set off by a bonnet of blue velvet, with soft gray plumes. Those were the days in which a bonnet was at once the aegis and the sanctuary of beauty. If you offended her, she took refuge in her bonnet. The police-courts have only become odious by the clamour of feminine complainants since the disappearance of the bonnet. It was awful as the helmet of Minerva, inviolable as the cestus of Diana. Nor was the bonnet of thirty-years ago an unbecoming headgear—a pretty face never looked prettier than when dimly seen in the shadowy depths of a coal-scuttle bonnet.
Miss Graham looked her best in one of those forgotten headdresses; the rich velvet, the drooping feathers, set off her showy face, and Laura and Ellen Mordaunt, in their fresh young beauty and simple costume, lost by contrast with the aristocratic belle.
The poor of Hallgrove parish looked forward eagerly to the coming of
Christmas.
Lionel Dale's parishioners knew that they would receive ample bounty from the hand of their wealthy and generous rector.
He loved to welcome old and young to the noble hall of his mansion, a spacious and lofty chamber, which had formed part of the ancient manor-house, and had been of late years converted into a rectory. He loved to see them clad in the comfortable garments which his purse had provided—the old women in their gray woollen gowns and scarlet cloaks, the little children brightly arrayed, like so many Red Riding hoods.
It was a pleasant sight truly, and there was a dimness in the rector's
eyes, as he stood at the head of a long table, at two o'clock on
Christmas-day, to say grace before the dinner spread for those humble
Christmas guests.
All the poor of the parish had been invited to dine with their pastor on Christmas-day, and this two o'clock dinner was a greater pleasure to the rector of Hallgrove than the repast which was to be served at seven o'clock for himself and the guests of his own rank.
There were some people in Hallgrove and its neighbourhood who said that Lionel Dale took more pleasure in this life than a clergyman and a good Christian should take; but surely those who had seen him seated by the bed of sickness, or ministering to the needs of affliction, could scarcely have grudged him the innocent happiness of his hours of relaxation. The one thing in which he himself felt that he was perhaps open to blame, was in his passion for the sports of the field.