“That is true—still you must have had people after you. With your expectations, and a good-looking girl. You always were quite a good-looking girl, Kate.”
“I am grateful for your approbation, Stella.”
“Only a little stuck-up looking—and—well, not quite so young as you used to be. If I were you I would go in for that old fellow, don’t you remember, whom papa got rid of in such a hurry—the man that came over with us in the Aurungzebe. Somebody told me he had done very well out there, and, of course, Charlie asked him to come and see us. And you know you were his fancy, Kate; it was you, not me—don’t you remember how everybody laughed? I should go in for him now if I were you. An old affair like that is quite a nice foundation. And I hear he has done very well, and he is just a suitable age, and it doesn’t really matter that—— What is passing the window? Oh,” cried Stella, clapping her hands, “the very same old landau that I remember all my life, and Lady Jane in her war paint, just the same. Let’s prepare to receive cavalry!” she cried. With a twist of her hand she drew two chairs into position, one very low, graceful and comfortable for herself, another higher, with elbows for Lady Jane. And Stella seated herself, with her fresh crape falling about her in crisp folds, her fair face and frizzy locks coming out of its blackness with great éclat, and her handkerchief in her hand. It was as good as a play (she herself felt, for I doubt whether Katherine relished the scene) to see her rise slowly and then drop, as it were, as lightly as a feather, but beyond speech, into Lady Jane’s arms, who, deeply impressed by this beautiful pose, clasped her and kissed her and murmured, “My poor child; my poor, dear child!” with real tears in her eyes.
“But what a comfort it must be to your mind,” Lady Jane said, when she had seated herself and was holding Stella’s hand, “to feel that there could be nothing against you in his mind—no rancour, no unkindness—only the old feeling that he loved you beyond everything; that you were still his pet, his little one, his favourite——” Lady Jane herself felt it so much that she was almost choked by a sob.
“Oh, dear Lady Jane,” cried Stella, evidently gulping down her own, “if I did not feel that, how could I ever have endured to come to this house—to dear papa’s house—to my own old home! that I was so wicked as to run away from, and so silly, never thinking. My only consolation is, though Kate has so little, so very little, to tell me of that dreadful time, that he must have forgiven me at the last.”
It was a very dreadful recollection to obtrude into the mind of the spectator in such a touching scene; but Katherine could not keep out of her eyes the vision of an old man in his chair saying quite calmly, “God damn them,” as he sat by his fireside. The thought made her shudder; it was one never to be communicated to any creature; but Lady Jane perceived the little tremulous movement that betrayed her, and naturally misinterpreted its cause.
“Yes,” she said, “my dear Stella, I am very happy for you; but there is poor Katherine left out in the cold who has done so much for him all these years.”
Stella, as was so natural to her, went on with the catalogue of her own woes without taking any notice of this. “Such a time as we have gone through, Lady Jane! Oh, I have reflected many a time, if it had not been for what everybody told us, I never, never, would have done so silly a thing. You all said, you remember, that papa would not hold out, that he could not get on without me, that he would be quite sure to send for me home. And I was over-persuaded. India is a dreadful place. You have double pay, but, oh, far more than double expenses! and as for dress, you want as much, if not more, than you would in London, and tribes upon tribes of servants that can do nothing. And then the children coming. And Job that has never had a day’s health, and how he is to live in England with a liver like a Strasburg goose, and his father stuffing him with everything that is bad for him, I don’t know. It has been a dreadful time; Kate has had all the good and I’ve had all the evil for seven years—fancy, for seven long years.”
“But you’ve had a good husband, at all events, Stella; and some pleasant things,” Lady Jane murmured in self-defence.
“Oh, Charlie! I don’t say that he is any worse than the rest. But fancy me—me, Stella, that you knew as a girl with everything I could think of—going to Government House over and over again in the same old dress; and Paris diamonds that cost ten pounds when they were new.”