“Sneyd will see that you get some refreshment before you retire for the night. You will meet Mrs. Die, and be put under her charge in the morning. Let me wish you a very good night, Lady Bell.”
Down, fathoms down, went the dismayed girlish heart; but, for as lightly as her uncle esteemed her breeding, then and thenceforth, Lady Bell walked out of the room, marshalled by Sneyd, with a more erect head and firmer step than those with which she had entered it. She did not salt the spiced beef, home-made bread, and mulled white wine with which Sneyd sought to regale her, with the tears which were ready to choke her. She responded loftily to his good-humoured attempts at entertaining her, so that he pronounced her in his mind “a chip of the old block,” as proud and passionate as fire, like Mrs. Die herself—but trust her to be broken in by Mrs. Die and Mrs. Kitty together, the poor young mylady!
Even after Lady Bell had been conducted to the dark, chill closet—all that there was for her room—which looked out on an unfinished wing of the house, where owls roosted and cats scrambled and miauled, she would not have given way before herself, so great was the mistake of Mr. Godwin that Lady Lucie’s instructions had not sunk into her grand-niece’s heart, had it not been for a physical, certainly not in itself heroic, shrinking from darkness, and apprehension at the idea of ghosts—like that of Cock Lane, which caused Lady Bell at last to lay aside her youthful dignity, as Louis le Grand laid aside his wig, from between closed curtains, and to break down and sob herself to sleep, with the bed-clothes drawn tightly over her head.
CHAPTER III.
MRS. KITTY.
The sound sleep of youth did much for Lady Bell. She awoke, comforted and refreshed in her closet,—furnished, Spartan-like, with checked linen and hard wood, the window looking across at the turrets crumbling down before they had been all built, with yawning slits for their windows and rotting boards between the different levels, which might have accommodated a score of robbers as well as owls and cats.
She was sad, but no longer in despair; she even felt inquisitive as well as hungry, and disposed to venture on a voyage of discovery in search of her aunt’s parlour and breakfast.
Sneyd, the butler, in his unencouraged essays at conversation the night before, had made Lady Bell acquainted with the habits of the family. The squire was never down in the morning till it was late, when he was at home, and that was but seldom, as he attended all the races. Lady Bell need not fear to stumble on her uncle, and be frozen to stone by his distant greeting. Neither did Mrs. Die show face at an early hour, according to Sneyd; she lay a-bed half the day always, the whole day often.
Indeed it appeared as if Sneyd’s caution against early rising, the reverse of the rule which the old fine lady, Lady Lucie, had imposed, was to be illustrated by the practice of the whole household, including Sneyd himself. Lady Bell wandered doubtfully about the staircase—vast to her after her grand-aunt’s London lodging, and with its weather-stains and cobwebs more conspicuous by broad daylight—and about the wide corridors. She peeped into half-open doors of what seemed always empty rooms. She was startled by the striking of the clock over the entrance-door, and scared by the growling of a dog, but she did not meet a living creature. The fact was that such servants as were astir were in the stables and cow-house.
At last a stout, red-cheeked country girl, in the extremity of rusticity to the town-bred eyes of Lady Bell, accustomed to a trim waiting-woman, instead of to a girl in a jacket, woollen apron, heavy frilled cap, and clamping clogs, stood arrested in the stranger’s way.
The country girl bobbed curtseys, and stared with round eyes, which had more admiration in them than the squire’s eyes had been able to hold, at the other girl,—lily-faced, in a black tabby gown, black gloves, black silk stockings with clocks, the dress finished off by black shoes with high heels, a white apron and neckerchief, and a little white cap of her own poised on the top of the dark curls. She was taken altogether aback when Lady Bell asked the direction of Mrs. Die’s parlour.