“Not a rose in June, but a rose in May!” the rector answered gallantly, kissing his hand to his niece, and then with his healthy bright lips saluting her: “you grow more and more like your mother, darling. Ah, when I think of the bygone days, before I had any wife, or daughters, things occur to me that never——”
“Go and bait your badger, Struan, after one more glass of wine.”
CHAPTER XXI.
A NOTABLE LADY.
Nature appears to have sternly willed that no man shall keep a secret. There is a monster, here and there perhaps to be discovered, who can sustain his boast of never whispering anything; but he ought to expect to be put aside, in our estimate of humanity. And in compensation, the powers above provide him, for the most part, with a wife of fecund loquacity.
A word is enough on such parlous themes; and the least said, the soonest mended. What one of us is not exceeding wise, in his own, or his wife’s opinion? What one of us does not pretend to be as “reticent” as Minerva’s owl; and yet in his heart confess that a secret is apt to fly out of his bosom?
Nature is full of rules; and if the above should happen to be one of them, it was illustrated in the third attack upon Sir Roland’s secrecy. For scarcely had he succeeded in baffling, without offending, his brother-in-law, when a servant brought him a summons from his mother, Lady Valeria.
According to all modern writers, whether of poetry or prose, in our admirable language, the daughter of an earl is always lovely, graceful, irresistible; almost to as great an extent as she is unattainable. This is but a natural homage on the part of nature to a power so far above her; so that this daughter of an Earl of Thanet had been, in every outward point, whatever is delightful. Neither had she shown any slackness in turning to the best account these notable gifts in her favour. In short, she had been a very beautiful woman, and had employed her beauty well, in having her own will and way. She had not married well, it is true, in the opinion of her compeers; but she had pleased herself, and none could say that she had lowered her family. The ancestors of Lord Thanet had held in villeinage of the Lorraines, some three or four hundred years after the Conquest, until, from being under so gentle a race, they managed to get over them.
Lady Valeria knew all this; and feeling as all women feel, the ownership of her husband (active or passive, whichever it be), she threw herself into the nest of Lorraine, and having no portion, waived all past obligation to parental ties. This was a noble act on her part, as her husband always said. He, Sir Roger Lorraine, lay under her thumb, as calmly as need be; yet was pleased as the birth of children gave some distribution of pressure. For the lady ruled the house, and lands, and all that was therein, as if she had brought them under her settlement.
Although Sir Roger had now been sleeping, for a good many years, with his fathers, his widow, Lady Valeria, showed no sign of any preparation for sleeping with her mothers. Now in her eighty-second year, this lady was as brisk and active, at least in mind, if not in body, as half a century ago she had been. Many good stories (and some even true) were told concerning her doings and sayings in the time of her youth and beauty. Doings were always put first, because for these she was more famous, having the wit of ready action more than of rapid words, perhaps. And yet in the latter she was not slack, when once she had taken up the quiver of the winged poison. She had seen so much of the world, and of the loftiest people that dwell therein—so far at least as they were to be found at the Court of George the Second—that she sat in an upper stratum now over all she had to deal with. And yet she was not of a narrow mind, when unfolded out of her creases.