“So that is your mysterious young woman?” said Lady Curtis. “No, Julia, no, she has never been on the stage. They never walk like that when they have been on the stage. She doesn’t know how to walk; but there is a kind of gracefulness about her. I cannot say if she is handsome or not; but what can such a woman as that possibly want here?”
“That is just what I never could make out,” said Cousin Julia, delighted to open forth on her favourite subject. Nancy just then turned round unconscious of the eyes bent upon her, to look at the cart with the baskets, and thus exposed herself unawares to the full gaze of her husband’s mother. Her long black dress gave a certain dignity to her figure, calling attention by its very plainness, and so did the little close black bonnet with its edge of white which encircled her face. Nancy in her ordinary garb and ordinary moods never had looked half so distinguished or lovely. Lady Curtis could not take her eyes from this face so softly tinted, so purely fresh and severely framed.
“Why didn’t you tell me before? The girl is a beauty!” she said.
“A beauty?” said Lucy, coming into the room; and she, too, gazed from behind her mother’s shoulder. Had she ever seen that face before? she asked herself, with an anxiety which neither of the others divined. She had seen it only once, for a minute or two, surrounded by clouds of bridal white. Was it likely she could recognise it now in this almost conventual severity of costume? She dropped behind her mother, half-satisfied, half-disappointed, and paid no attention to the further comments of Lady Curtis, which delighted Mrs. Rolt. If it was no one she had ever seen before—what did it matter to Lucy who it was? But when the two ladies had left Cousin Julia, after they had taken a few steps on the way home, Lady Curtis came to a sudden pause.
“Don’t you think, Lucy,” she said, in a conciliatory tone, “that it would be only kind to call upon those new people? They must feel very strange in this quiet place; and as she really seems a lady—”
“I am quite willing to go, mamma;” said Lucy, feeling her heart beat more quickly in spite of herself.
“But don’t you think it is only a duty?” said Lady Curtis. She wanted to be persuaded that she ought to go—not to go merely because she was curious, which was the real reason; but when Lucy returned no further answer, her mother, making use of her own impatience of temper as a reason for doing what she wanted, turned sharp round with a little show of annoyance at Lucy, and went straight across to the cottage door. Cousin Julia saw her, and almost clapped her hands with pleasure, as she lurked behind the curtains and watched; and the two people in the Wren Cottage, who had been watching also from their windows since they came in, saw her too, and prepared for the visit with excitement indescribable. Lady Curtis’s movements were so rapid that she had knocked at the door, and Matilda had opened, before Nancy, who was standing behind, had got over her first breathless start of agitation and suspicion. She was standing, leaning forward a little, her hands clasped, her lips apart and panting with excitement, when the visitors saw her first. Lady Curtis was in a little glow of pleasure and interest.
“I had heard of Mrs. Arthur as a new neighbour,” she said; “I hope I may come in and pay my respects, though it is getting late.”
“Oh, come in, come in, my lady;” cried Matilda, officiously hastening to place chairs for the great ladies. Matilda’s heart was not leaping so in her breast that she thought it must escape altogether—but Nancy’s was, as she felt herself suddenly in the presence of these two ladies, with whom her own fate was so closely connected. She held her heart with her hand, that it might not leap out of her throat, and made a gasp for breath, and could say nothing; and it was no wonder if Lady Curtis was flattered by the impression made by her visit, and thought she had never seen so expressive a face before.
“My sister will be very pleased to make your ladyship’s acquaintance,” said Matilda. “What a fine day, and what a blessing after the wet! We were beginning to think it never would be fine again. Anna! don’t you see my lady—and haven’t you got a word to say?”