And as Helen set the embroidery-frame, Lady Davenant searched for some skeins of silk and silk winders.
“Take these, my dear, and wind this silk for me, for I must have my hearer comfortably established, not like the agonised listener in the ‘World’ leaning against a table, with the corner running into him all the time.”
CHAPTER IV.
“I must go back,” continued Lady Davenant, “quite to the dark ages, the time when I knew nothing of my daughter’s character but by the accidental lights which you afforded me. I will take up my story before the reformation, in the middle ages, when you and your dear uncle left us at Florence; about two years ago, when Cecilia was in the height of her conquests, about the time when a certain Colonel D’Aubiguy flourished, you remember him?”
Helen answered “Yes,” in rather a constrained voice, which caused Lady Davenant to look up, and on seeing that look of inquiry, Helen coloured, though she would have given the world not to be so foolish. The affair was Cecilia’s, and Helen only wished not to have it recurred to, and yet she had now, by colouring, done the very thing to fix Lady Davenant’s attention, and as the look was prolonged, she coloured more and more.
“I see I was wrong,” said Lady Davenant; “I had thought Colonel D’Aubigny’s ecstasy about that miniature of you was only a feint; but I see he really was an admirer of yours, Helen?”
“Of mine! oh no, never!” Still from her fear of saying something that should implicate Cecilia, her tone, though she spoke exactly the truth, was not to Lady Davenant’s discriminative ear quite natural—Helen seeing doubt, added,
“Impossible, my dear Lady Davenant! you know I was then so young, quite a child!”