“I am sure I am very glad, Bee,” said her mother, “for I always had a dread that you would be snatched off somewhere to—Styria or Dalecarlia, or heaven knows where—(these were the first out-of-the-way names that came to Mrs. Kingsward’s mind; but I don’t know that they were altogether without reference or possibilities), where one would have had no chance of seeing you more than once in two or three years. I am very thankful it is to be an Englishman—or at least I shall be,” she added, with a sigh of suspense, “as soon as I have heard from papa——”
“One would think, Mütterchen, that you were frightened for papa.”
“I shouldn’t like you ever to try and go against him, Bee!”
“Oh, no,” said Bee, lightly, “of course I shouldn’t think of going against him—is the inquisition over?—for I promised,” she said, with a laugh and a blush, “to walk down with Aubrey as far as the river. He likes that so much better than those noisy blazing gardens, with no shade except under those stuffy trees—and so do I.”
“Do you really, Bee? I thought you thought it was so nice sitting under the trees——”
“With all the gnadige Fraus knitting, and all the wohlgeborne Herrs smoking. No, indeed, I always hated it!” said Bee.
She jumped up from where she had been sitting on a stool by her mother’s sofa, and took her hat, which she had thrown down on the table. It was a broad, flexible, Leghorn hat, bought in Florence, with a broad blue ribbon—the colour of her eyes, as had often been said—floating in two long streamers behind. She had a sash of the same colour round the simple waist of her white frock. That is how girls were dressed in the early days of Victoria. These were the days of simplicity, and people liked it, seeing it was the fashion, as much as they liked crinolines and chignons when such ornamental arrangements “came in.” It does not become one period to boast itself over another, for fashion will still be lord—or lady—of all.
Mrs. Kingsward looked with real pleasure at her pretty daughter, thinking how well she looked. She wore very nearly the same costume herself, and she knew that it also looked very well on her. Bee’s eyes were shining, blazing with brightness and happiness and love and fun and youth. She was not a creature of perfect features, or matchless beauty, as all the heroines were in the novels of her day, and she was conscious of a great many shortcomings from that high standard. She was not tall enough—which, perhaps, however, in view of the defective stature of Mr. Aubrey Leigh was not so great a disadvantage—and she was neither fair enough nor dark enough for a Minna or a Brenda, the definite and distinct blonde and brunette, which were the ideal of the time; and she was not at all aware that her irregularity, and her mingling of styles, and her possession of no style in particular, were her great charms. She was not a great beauty, but she was a very pretty girl with the additional attraction of those blue diamonds of eyes, the sparkle of which, when my young lady was angry or when she was excited in any more pleasurable way, was a sight to see.
“All that’s very well, my dear,” said Mrs. Kingsward, “but you’ve never answered my question: and I hope you’ll make quite, quite sure before it’s all settled that you do like Aubrey Leigh above everybody in the world.”
“A la bonne heure,” said Bee; “you have called him Aubrey at last, without waiting to know what papa will say:” with which words she gave her mother a flying kiss, and was gone in a moment, thinking very little, it must be allowed, of what papa might say.