In her now excited state of communicativeness, Lady Castlefort rose and looked all about the room for the papers, saying, “They were here, they were there, all yesterday; Katrine had them showing them to Lady Masham in the morning, and to all her blue set afterwards—Lord knows what she has done with them. So tiresome looking for things! how I hate it.”
She rang the bell and inquired from the footman if he knew what had become of the papers. Of course he did not know, could not imagine—servants never know, nor can imagine what have become of newspapers—but he would inquire. While he went to inquire, Lady Castlefort sank down again into her bergère, and again fell into admiration of Cecilia’s state of impatience.
“How curious you are! Now I am never really curious about any thing that does not come home to myself; I have so little interest about other people.”
This was said in all the simplicity of selfishness, not from candour, but from mere absence of shame, and utter ignorance of what others think—what others feel, which always characterises, and often betrays the selfish, even where the head is best capable of supplying the deficiencies of the heart. But Louisa Castlefort had no head to hide her want of heart; while Cecilia, who had both head and heart, looked down upon her cousin with surprise, pity, and contempt, quick succeeding each other, in a sort of parenthesis of feeling, as she moved her eyes for a moment from the door on which they had been fixed, and to which they recurred, while she stood waiting for the appearance of those newspapers. The footman entered with them. “In Mr. Landrum’s room they were, my lady.”
Lady Cecilia did not hear a word that was said, nor did she see that the servant laid a note on the table. It was well that Louisa had that note to read, and to answer, while Cecilia looked at the paragraphs in these papers; else her start must have been seen, her exclamation must have been heard: it must have been marked, that the whole character of her emotion changed from generous sympathy with her friend, to agony of fear for herself. The instant she cast her eyes on that much-read paper, she saw the name of Colonel D’Aubigny; all the rest swam before her eyes. Lady Castlefort, without looking up from her writing, asked—What day of the month? Cecilia could not answer, but recalled to herself by the sound of the voice, she now tried to read—she scarcely read the words, but some way took the sense into her mind at a glance.
CHAPTER VI.
The first of these paragraphs caught the eye by its title in capital letters.
“LA BELLE FIANCÉE.