“I was indebted to a chance ride,” answered Lady Bell evasively, with the tell-tale colour mounting in her cheeks, and a little air, as if she were above being questioned.
Her questioner took in these details, and looked half-keenly, half-commiseratingly, at her companion.
The gentleman bent over, and whispered impressively to the lady, “Have nothing to do with the girl. It is very odd that she should be travelling, and staying over the night alone at an inn. You know that you cannot be too particular.”
“Pshaw!” exclaimed the lady aloud, with a little impatience. Then she gazed out of the chaise window, and observed meditatively, “I am sure I once travelled this road before, and by myself. It must have been on my way to Guy’s Cliff, for in all my journeyings, as one of a large family, I never went alone, save then.”
“I ought to remember the occasion, my dear,” declared the gentleman with a smirk of self-satisfaction and congratulation.
“So ought I,” responded the lady with a little sigh, passing into a smile. “I don’t believe that I was older than this young lady,” she added suddenly.
Lady Bell started slightly. She had been disturbed in thinking of the woman before her, five or six and twenty, who had only once gone on a solitary journey, and who had now her baby nestling in her arms, and her husband, only too attentive, sitting opposite her.
“I am nearly sixteen years of age,” Lady Bell replied, for she had been schooling herself to make friends in that world on which she was launched; and she had been reflecting upon what account she would give of herself. The manners of this lady, a little impulsive and unfinished, as they were, did not repel Lady Bell, so she proceeded naïvely, “I have already been in service,” she brought herself to describe it thus; “unfortunately for me, madam, it was a hard service; therefore I am looking out for another—I am bound for London on that errand.”
The woman to whom Lady Bell spoke, if not a woman of quality, but something infinitely greater, knew the ring of quality as she knew the heart of human nature.
She gave her husband a look to silence him, a telegraphic look, which said as plainly as look could say, “This is a girl of position masquerading in broad day. Let her make what statement she will, can’t I see through disguises? Ah! set a thief to catch a thief. Don’t I know her kind, having counted women of quality among my friends since I was a poor little waif? If she be a runaway, as I strongly suspect, she is tolerably sure to be sought after, and there will be no loss to those who have taken care of her. In the meantime her company will be a gain to me, for you know that I aim at refined thoughts and high-bred dignity in the fullest swing of my profession. The worst is, that I am afraid she has done something amiss, poor child! and I am not one of your lax people, who are all for wrong-doers, but surely it cannot be anything purely bad and unpardonable, and she so young.”