Mrs De Courcy, who had approached them, now spoke on some indifferent subject, and saved her son from a very awkward attempt at explanation. She drew her chair close to Laura, and soon engaged her in a conversation so animated, that Montague forgot his embarrassment, and joined them with all his natural ease and cheerfulness. The infection of his ease and cheerfulness Laura had ever found irresistible. Flashes of wit and genius followed the collision of their minds; and the unstudied eloquence, the poetic imagery of her style, sprung forth at his touch, like blossoms in the steps of the fabled Flora.
Happy with her friends, Laura almost forgot the disagreeable adventure of the morning; and, every look and word mutually bestowing pleasure, the little party were as happy as affection and esteem could make them, when Lady Pelham, with an aspect like a sea fog, and a voice suitably forbidding, inquired whether her niece would be pleased to go home, or whether she preferred sitting chattering there all night. Laura, without any sign of noticing the rudeness of this address, rose, and said she was quite ready to attend her Ladyship. In vain did the De Courcys entreat her to prolong her visit till the morning. To dare to be happy without her concurrence, was treason against Lady Pelham's dignity; and unfortunately she was not in a humour to concur in the joy of any living thing. De Courcy's reserve towards her new favourite she considered as a tacit reproof of her own cordiality; and she had just such a conviction that the reproof was deserved, as to make her thoroughly out of humour with the reprover, with herself, and consequently with everybody else. Determined to interrupt pleasure which she would not share, the more her hosts pressed her stay, the more she hastened her departure; and she mingled her indifferent good nights to them with more energetic reprimands to the tardiness of her coachman.
'Thank heaven,' said she, thrusting herself into the corner of her carriage with that jerk in her motion which indicates a certain degree of irritation, 'to-morrow we shall probably see a civilized being.' A short pause followed. Laura's plain integrity and prudence had gained such ascendancy over Lady Pelham, that her niece's opinion was to her Ladyship a kind of second conscience, having, indeed, much the same powers as the first. Its sanction was necessary to her quiet, though it had not force to controul her actions. On the present occasion she wished, above all things, to know Laura's sentiments; but she would not condescend to ask them directly. 'Colonel Hargrave's manners are quite those of a gentleman,' she resumed. The remark was entirely ineffectual; for Laura coolly assented, without inquiring whether he were the civilized being whom Lady Pelham expected to see. Another pause. 'Colonel Hargrave will be at Walbourne to-morrow,' said Lady Pelham, the tone of her voice sharpening with impatience. 'Will he, Ma'am?' returned Laura, without moving a muscle. 'If Miss Montreville has no objections,' said Lady Pelham, converting by a toss of her head and a twist of her upper lip, the words of compliment into an insult. 'Probably,' said Laura, with a smile, 'my objections would make no great difference.'—'Oh, to be sure!' returned Lady Pelham, 'it would be lost labour to state them to such an obstinate, unreasonable person as I am! Well, I believe you are the first who ever accused me of obstinacy.' If Lady Pelham expected a compliment to her pliability, she was disappointed; for Laura only answered, 'I shall never presume to interfere in the choice of your Ladyship's visitors.'
That she should be thus compelled to be explicit was more than Lady Pelham's temper could endure. Her eyes flashing with rage, 'Superlative humility indeed!' she exclaimed with a sneer; but, awed, in spite of herself, from the free expression of her fury, she muttered it within her shut teeth in a sentence of which the words 'close' and 'jesuitical' alone reached Laura's ear. A long and surly silence followed; Lady Pelham's pride and anger struggling with her desire to learn the foundation and extent of the disapprobation which she suspected that her conduct excited. The latter, at last, partly prevailed; though Lady Pelham still disclaimed condescending to direct consultation.
'Pray, Miss Montreville,' said she, 'if Colonel Hargrave's visits were to you, what mighty objections might your sanctity find to them?'—Laura had long ago observed that a slight exertion of her spirit was the best quietus to her aunt's ill humour; and, therefore, addressing her with calm austerity, she said, 'Any young woman, Madam, who values her reputation, might object to Colonel Hargrave's visits, merely on the score of prudence. But even my "superlative humility" does not reconcile me to company which I despise; and my "sanctity," as your Ladyship is pleased to call it, rather shrinks from the violator of laws divine and human.'
Lady Pelham withdrew her eyes to escape a glance which they never could stand; but, bridling, she said, 'Well, Miss Montreville, I am neither young nor sanctimonious, therefore your objections cannot apply to Colonel Hargrave's visits to me; and I am determined,' continued she, speaking as if strength of voice denoted strength of resolution, 'I am determined, that I will not throw away the society of an agreeable man, to gratify the whims of a parcel of narrow-minded bigots.'
To this attack Laura answered only with a smile. She smiled to see herself classed with the De Courcys; for she had no doubt that they were the 'bigots' to whom Lady Pelham referred. She smiled, too, to observe that the boasted freedom of meaner minds is but a poor attempt to hide from themselves the restraint imposed by the opinions of the wise and good.
The carriage stopped, and Laura took sanctuary in her own apartment; but at supper she met her aunt with smiles of unaffected complacency, and, according to the plan which she invariably pursued, appeared to have forgotten Lady Pelham's fit of spleen; by that means enabling her aunt to recover from it with as little expence to her pride as possible.