“Looking out for service, are you, madam?” the lady inquired openly, with no failure of respect in her tone, though she assumed a confidential manner, in defiance of her stolid partner’s coughs and winks. “Why, I think if you are not too difficult, and like to rest a little on your way to London, I might accommodate you for a week or two. I am Mrs. Siddons, late of Drury Lane, now of the Bath Theatre; but I am on a tour, at present, in the midland counties, and I should be the better of a genteel, modest young female to accompany me, to help me at my lodgings with my wardrobe, and with my little charmer, Henry.”
CHAPTER XV.
LIFE WITH THE PLAYERS.
The prospect was not alluring to Lady Bell. It sounded like a horrible descent and social fall. She had not even heard of Mrs. Siddons, for Mrs. Abingdon had been the first lady in the theatrical world when Lady Bell had been in a box at the play.
But the girl was taken with the actress, as well as tempted to close with the first offer of shelter and support, and there was a spice of adventure in the offer dear to the girlish heart.
“If you will let me stay with you over your first halt,” Lady Bell suggested a compromise, hesitatingly, “I shall indeed be glad of the rest, and we could see how we—how I shall suit.”
“Exactly,” agreed the actress cordially; “and what am I to call my young friend?”
“Arabella Barlowe,” replied Lady Bell, hastily supplying only her first and middle names.
“Very well, Miss Barlowe, then will you be so obliging as to take little Henry from me, till I stretch my arms.”
Lady Bell complied with the request, but, unaccustomed to the office she had undertaken, she held the child in a constrained position, and he immediately set up a cry.
Mr. Siddons shook his head meaningly, as if to signify his anticipation of the failure of the scheme, and to add the reproachful reminder, “I told you to have nothing to do with her, yet here you’ve gone and engaged her as a companion, without a character from her former mistress, on the shortest acquaintance, and that in very doubtful circumstances where the girl is concerned. Was there ever such rashness, or wrongheadedness heard of? What would become of you, with all your talents, if I were not here to direct them and look after you? You know how much the success of such an actress as you are, depends nowadays on respectability, and now an undesirable connection may do us irreparable injury. Yet here you go, and will take no telling. And the white-faced, stuck-up thing is going to be useless into the bargain.”