Lady Lamerton had her weaknesses, but she had also her strength, and her strength was the rectitude of her heart, which made her do her duty with all her power. In pursuance of this sense of duty, Lady Lamerton had been unfailingly kind to Arminell. The girl, looking back, saw this now, and was stung with self-reproach, because in return for this treatment she cast the apple of discord between her father and mother, and broke what to her ladyship was the most precious jewel she possessed—her reverence for my lord.
And how—when it pleased Arminell to return home after all the disturbance she had caused, the pain and humiliation she had occasioned—how would she be received again by those she had wronged and hurt? She had no doubt upon this point. She knew that she would be received with open arms, and without a word of reproach from one or the other.
Then Arminell began to sob, and she saw no more the ostler curricombing his horse, nor the woman shaking a table-cloth out of a window, nor the sparrows quarrelling for the crumbs, nor the back of a maid seated outside a house on a window ledge cleaning the glass, or she saw these things through a watery film.
She was roused by a tap at her door. She hastily dried her eyes, and stood up, with her back to the light, that her discomposure might be unobserved, and called to the person without to enter.
A waiter opened the door and announced that a gentleman had called, and was below in a private sitting-room. He extended a tray, and Miss Inglett took from it a card, and read, “Mr. James Welsh.”
“I will come down directly,” she said.
The waiter bowed and closed the door.
Arminell tarried for a moment only, to recover herself, and then descended. She expected to see Jingles with his uncle, but he was not in the room.
“At your service, Miss Inglett. I am the uncle of Hansel who has run away with Grethel. You find that you have not come to the cottage of almond rock, with windows of barley sugar. You are not, I suppose, interested in politics?”
“No, or only slightly. Social subjects—”