Robinson followed his superior promptly into a smaller room. Edgar was left with the culprit; and it is scarcely possible to realize a less comfortable position. What was he to do with her? He was not acquainted either with her or her class; he did not know how to address her. She looked like a lady, but yet was not a lady, and for the present moment she was on her trial. Was he to laugh, as he felt inclined to do, at the shabby trick his friend had played him, or was he to proceed gravely with his mission? Miss Lockwood solved this question for herself.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Two Culprits on their Trial.
“You’re surprised, Sir, that a stranger should be so ready to speak up to you,” said Miss Lockwood, “you don’t know me from Adam? but I know you. You are the gentleman that was in the great Arden case, the gentleman as gave up. You wouldn’t think it, but I am mixed up with the Ardens too; and as soon as I set eyes upon you, I said to myself, ‘Here is one that will help me to my rights.’”
“Have you, too, rights that involve the Ardens?” said Edgar, startled yet half amused. “Alas, I fear I cannot help you. If you know my story you must know I am no Arden, and have no influence with the family one way or another.”
“You mightn’t have influence, Sir, but you might hate ’em—as I do,” she said, with a gleam in her eyes which changed the character of her otherwise commonplace though handsome countenance.
“Hate them!” cried Edgar, still more startled. “Why, this is a tragical way of approaching the subject. What have the Ardens done to you that you should hate them?”
“That’s my story,” said Miss Lockwood, meeting him full with a steadfast look in her eyes, which bewildered Edgar still more. She had taken a seat, and the two sat looking at each other across Mr. Tottenham’s writing table. Edgar had not even heard the name of Arden for years past, and nothing was further from his thoughts on entering this most commonplace of scenes, the great shop, than to be thrown back into his own past life, by the touch of one of the young ladies in the shawl and mantle department. His curiosity was awakened, but not in any high degree, for it was absurd to suppose that a shopwoman in Tottenham’s could have any power to affect the Ardens one way or another. He felt that this must be a tempest in a teacup, some trifling supposed injustice, something, perhaps, about a cottage on the estate, or the rancour of a dismissed servant; for he had heard vaguely that there had been considerable changes.
“I am afraid I cannot sympathize with you in hating the Ardens,” he said; “if you know so much about me, you must know that I was brought up to regard Mrs. Arden as my sister, which I still do, notwithstanding the change of circumstances; and no one connected with her can be to me an object of hate.”
“Mrs. Arden, indeed!” said Miss Lockwood with contemptuous emphasis, tossing her handsome head.
“Yes. What has Mrs. Arden done to you?” said Edgar, half angry, half amused with what seemed to him the impotent spitefulness; the absurdity of the woman’s scorn struck him with ludicrous effect; and yet a certain uneasiness was in the puzzle. Clare Arden had never possessed that natural instinctive courtesy which makes dependents friends. Probably she had wounded the amour propre of the shopwoman; but then no doubt shopwomen have to make up their minds to such wounds, and Mrs. Arden was much too well bred and much too proud to have gone out of her way to annoy a young lady at Tottenham’s—any offence given or taken must have been a mere inadvertence, whatever it was.