This evening was an eventful evening at The Elms. When Mrs. Frederick had rested sufficiently and calmed down, she was carried off by her husband with the very briefest and driest of leave-takings. Old Sir Timothy and his wife had gone off before, as hurriedly as was consistent with good-breeding, shaking their old heads over the family fray they had witnessed, and forming suppositions as to the origin of Mrs. Frederick which did her injustice, unexalted though her antecedents were.
“I don’t know what Mrs. Eastwood could mean by asking me to meet such a person,” cried Lady Doul in high dudgeon.
“Hush! my dear, hush! the poor woman was trying to make the best of it,” said Sir Timothy; “and though she’s evidently a termagant, she’s extraordinarily pretty, wonderfully pretty.”
“I have no patience with you men,” said Lady Doul. “Pretty! what has pretty to do with it? Do you think a pretty face is like charity, and covers a multitude of sins?”
“A great many, my dear,” said old Sir Timothy, with a chuckle. And so the old pair jogged on to their lodgings, half sorry, half shocked, half indignant. The party they left behind was more seriously excited. The first thing Mrs. Eastwood did was to hurry off Innocent to bed, accompanying her to her room with a fear for the effect of Amanda’s ravings upon her feelings, which was really uncalled for; for Innocent’s feelings were too little on the surface to be moved by any such assault. It had given rise to vague thoughts in her mind, but no wound—thoughts which, when her aunt, with many caresses, had left her, she expressed to old Alice, with more freedom than probably she would have ventured upon with any one else. Innocent’s habitation was now in the old schoolroom, to which she had taken so great a fancy. And here Alice waited upon her with a care which amazed the other servants, for Innocent had nothing to give in return, not even thanks or caresses, and was considered “proud” and “stuck-up” in her dreamy habitual silence.
“She said I might be a companion,” said Innocent. “And Sir Alexis said something too—a companion! I am Nelly’s companion and my aunt’s, she says—Frederick’s wife meant something different. Alice, you are old; you know a great many things——”
“I know you’re but an innocent, my poor bonnie bairn,” said the old woman with a sigh.
“Of course I am Innocent; but that is only my name. Companion is not a name; it is a thing. She is Frederick’s companion. My aunt says he will never be rid of her—never—so long as she lives. What a pity that she cannot be made to stop living! She scolds—like—like—she grows red like the women we once saw quarrelling in the street.”
“When you stoppit to tell them it was ugly,” said Alice; “and why should they scold each other?”
“Yes,” said Innocent, “to scold children is natural, I suppose, at least, everybody does it, even you, Alice; but Frederick’s wife—and he cannot send her away. I wish she might die, and then Frederick would be free.”