There were “creeturs,” Miss Kingscote declared emphatically, who stole into honourable houses and plotted against their credit. Miss Kingscote seemed to become morbidly concerned with these “creeturs,” vain peacocks, serpents in disguise, who aimed at occupying the seats of their betters, but would never reach those seats, instead would “sup” sorrow and disgrace, as the just punishment of their scandalous lightness of head and unwarrantable ambition.
“But you would never be such a pagan, Miss,” Miss Kingscote would protest relentingly, not without a warning in the relenting, “you’ve been taken in and had the warmest corner here, as if you had been my sister, indeed—though, Lud! no sister of mine—a Kingscote of Nutfield, would have gone into service, rather starve, or live on the hards, as I have lived many and many’s the day.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Miss Kingscote,” Lady Bell defended herself, too scornful in her surprise to be even sorely displeased. “I think the best of us may go into service, and that the only truly demeaning service is what we cannot honestly perform. Yes, you have been very kind to me, but I do not know what you mean.”
“You wouldn’t be so horn mad,” persisted Miss Kingscote, looking Lady Bell hard in the face, “as to force me to give you the back of the door, Miss Barlowe, for misbehaviour, with the small chance it would give of a rise in the world? As for them boobies of men,” added Miss Kingscote, “they are good for nought save to breed strife. They’re as blind as bats to their own goods, and as wild as tigerses when they’re crossed for their goods, and after their toys is broke, ‘trample these toys under foot’ is the order of the day.”
“You’re very hard on the men,” said Lady Bell, “but I have nothing to do to defend them.”
“In course, Master Charles is among the best of his sort,” explained Miss Kingscote, striving to speak loftily in her turn. “He’ll think better on it. He’ll come out at the head of the cart yet, and conduct himself conformable, not disappointing none of his friends and well-wishers. He’ll cut a dash, and bring home a flag or two, or a gun, like his forefathers did—his and mines. He’ll wait till then and mate with his equal.”
“With all my heart, Miss Kingscote,” replied Lady Bell, and then she remonstrated, “but good gracious! why should I have to come out at the foot of the cart because he is to leap from the head?”
Miss Kingscote had no answer to that indignant demand save a sulky “You know best, miss; it lies with you. I reckon your lot will be of your own choosing.”
Lady Bell could have laughed bitterly; she could have packed up the small wardrobe which she had gathered before her purse was stolen, and seen her last of Nutfield and the Kingscotes.
But here was no laughing matter, and although it had not come to this that Lady Bell Trevor, the forlorn young wife of Trevor of Trevor Court, had entered into a rivalry, which would have been tenfold base on her part, with Miss Polly Barnard and Miss Ironside, the daughters of the mayor of Lumley, for the favour of so simple a country gentleman, still she could ill dispense with the shelter of that gentleman’s roof and the countenance of his sister.