For some time after starting the lady was engrossed with her child. When she had hushed it to rest, she took out a book, which she had carried in a reticule, and set herself to study it.
The study was a matter of lively interest to the gentleman, as he bent forward and asked at intervals, “Have you got it yet? Ain’t you mistress of it?” His insignificance did not flow forth in other chatter, happily for Lady Bell, who found him as taciturnly indifferent to her as the lady was, and much less of an involuntary interruption to her troubled thoughts.
Excited by the change of scene, even by the mild motion of a post-chaise which exhilarated Dr. Johnson, and by her strange fellow-travellers, Lady Bell was continually drawn from her cogitations.
She would wonder if Squire Trevor had discovered her escape, and whether all Peasmarsh were up after her. She would ask herself what she should do next—what would become of her after she reached London.
But absorbing as such considerations must have been to an older, more experienced woman, Lady Bell continually broke them off to be amused and interested like a child in the novelty of her present position, above all, to be fascinated with the lady who was more grandly beautiful than Mrs. Sundon.
The lady had her baby asleep on one arm; with the other she held up the book, on which her fine dark eyes, their loveliest fringe of eyelashes drooping over them as she read, were riveted. Her lips were moving, as if repeating the sound of the characters in the intentness of the perusal. Once or twice Lady Bell was caught, and was held, as it were, spell-bound, by a look of sweetness or scorn or anguish, in apparent sympathy with the text.
What author could find such a reader, who was never turned from him by the September sunshine, or its cloud-shadows on the sombre green, or the yellow and brown of leaves and fields, by the jolting of the carriage, by the presence of a stranger—only by the clenching of the baby’s little fist or its drowsy whimper, as it stirred and went to sleep again!
What reader could be thus book-struck, and utterly inaccessible to what were to Lady Bell the irresistible influences of a journey?
At last the reader, announcing to her companion that she had done her task, closed her book, replaced it in the reticule, sat up, looked round her, and seemed preparing to be social.
Her eye glanced inquisitively at Lady Bell. “You missed a coach last night, madam; coaches are often unpunctual, either one way or t’other. It is a shame, and should be seen to.” She began the conversation as if the party had just started.