Miss Anastasia stood aside, watching grimly this unexpected demonstration of friendship, and keenly criticising Agnes, who coloured high with youthful dignity and resentment, and Marian, who drew back abashed, with a painful blush, and a grieved and anxious consciousness that Louis, unseen but seeing, was a spectator of this salutation, and somehow would be quite as like to resent Mrs Edgerley’s careless compliment to herself, “as if I had been his sister.” With a steady observation the old lady kept her eyes upon her young acquaintances till the horsemen and horsewomen of Mrs Edgerley’s train had passed. Then she drew herself up to the utmost pitch of her extreme height, and, without raising her eyes, made a profound curtsy to the last of the train—he on his part lifted his hat, and bent to his saddle-bow. This was how Lord Winterbourne and his brother’s daughter recognised each other. Perhaps the wandering eyes in his bloodless face glanced a moment, shifting and uncertain as they were, upon the remarkable figure of Miss Rivers, but they certainly paused to take in, with one fixed yet comprehensive glance, the mother and the daughters, the children playing in the garden—the open door of the house—even it was possible he saw Louis, though Louis had been behind, at the end of the little green, out of sight, trying to train a wild honeysuckle round an extempore bower. Lord Winterbourne scarcely paused, and did not offer the slightest apology for his stare, but they felt, all of them, that he had marked the house, and laid them under the visionary curse of his evil eye. When he had passed, Miss Rivers put them in before her, with an imperative gesture. “Let me know what’s brewing,” said the Honourable Anastasia, as she reposed herself on the little new sofa in the old parlour. “There’s mischief in his eye.”
CHAPTER XXV.
THE BREWING OF THE STORM.
The visit of Miss Rivers was the most complimentary attention which she could show to her new friends, for her visits were few, and paid only to a very limited number of people, and these all of her own rank and class. She was extremely curious as to their acquaintance with Mrs Edgerley, and demanded to know every circumstance from its beginning until now; and this peremptory old lady was roused to quite an eager and animated interest in the poor little book of which, Agnes could not forget, Mrs Edgerley did not remember so much as the name. The Honourable Anastasia declared abruptly that she never read novels, yet demanded to have Hope Hazlewood placed without an instant’s delay in her pony-carriage. “Do it at once, my dear: a thing which is done at the moment cannot be forgotten,” said Miss Rivers. “You write books, eh? Well, I asked you if you were clever; why did you not tell me at once?”
“I did not think you would care; it was not worth while,” said Agnes with some confusion, and feeling considerably alarmed by the idea of this formidable old lady’s criticism. Miss Rivers only answered by hurrying her out with the book, lest it might possibly be forgotten. When the girls were gone, she turned to Mrs Atheling. “What can he do to you,” said Miss Anastasia, abruptly, “eh? What’s Will Atheling doing? Can he harm Will?”
“No,” said Mamma, somewhat excited by the prospect of an enemy, yet confident in the perfect credit and honour of the family father, whose good name and humble degree of prosperity no enemy could overthrow. “William has been where he is now for twenty years.”
“So, so,” said Miss Rivers—“and the boy? Take care of these girls; it might be in his devilish way to harm them; and I tell you, when you come to know of it, send me word. So she writes books, this girl of yours? She is no better than a child. Do you mean to say you are not proud?”
Mrs Atheling answered as mothers answer when such questions are put to them, half with a confession, half with a partly-conscious sophism, about Agnes being “a good girl, and a great comfort to her papa and me.”
The girls, when they had executed their commission, looked doubtingly for Louis, but found him gone as they expected. While they were still lingering where he had been, Miss Rivers came to the door again, going away, and when she had said good-by to Mamma, the old lady turned back again without a word, and very gravely gathered one of the roses. She did it with a singular formality and solemness as if it was a religious observance rather than a matter of private liking; and securing it somewhere out of sight in the fastenings of her brown pelisse, waved her hand to them, saying in her peremptory voice, quite loud enough to be heard at a considerable distance, that she was to send for them in a day or two. Then she took her seat in the little carriage, and turned her grey ponies, no very easy matter, towards the high-road. Her easy and complete mastery over them was an admiration to the girls. “Bless you, miss, she’d follow the hounds as bold as any squire,” said Hannah; “but there’s a deal o’ difference in Miss Taesie since the time she broke her heart.”
Such an era was like to be rather memorable. The girls thought so, somewhat solemnly, as they went to their work beside their mother. They seemed to be coming to graver times themselves, gliding on in an irresistible noiseless fashion upon their stream of fate.
Louis came again as usual in the evening. He had heard Mrs Edgerley, and did resent her careless freedom, as Marian secretly knew he would; which fact she who was most concerned, ascertained by his entire and pointed silence upon the subject, and his vehement and passionate contempt, notwithstanding, for Mrs Edgerley.