Mrs Wiseman advanced towards the couple with a smile in which it would be hard to tell whether amiability or innocence was the more conspicuous.
“Oh, Mr Bloxam,” she sweetly said, “Stella asked me to excuse her to you; the poor child felt suddenly faint, and had to go to her room and lie down.”
Mr Bloxam regarded her with an intent look of instinctive suspicion, which, however, glanced off abashed from the guilelessness of her mien. Then he said, in measured and unenthusiastic tone—
“We await your congratulations; Miss Simpson has consented to be my wife.”
Mrs Wiseman’s felicitations were ardent exceedingly. She even went the length of kissing the coy Lavinia on her chaste lips. Just then she was so delighted at the complete success of her scheme that she would not have minded kissing Mr Bloxam himself. She watched the newly-engaged couple saunter down the garden and disappear into the shrubbery that had veiled the initial transports of Mr Winterton and Matilda. Then she hurried to the room where Stella was lying on her bed a prey to the deepest misery, clasped that dejected damsel to her motherly bosom, and told the good news in disjointed words. Stella broke into a springtide shower of happy tears, and clung to her preserver from the matrimonial toils of Bloxam, the ogre, like a nestling child. Mrs Wiseman, after kissing the girl affectionately, and telling her to remain quietly where she was, left the room. She immediately wrote a note to Mr Wardley, telling him of the blissful turn which events had taken, and recommending him as well to keep out of the way for the present. This note she despatched to the wagons by a servant.
Soon Mr Wiseman, accompanied by Mr Winterton and Matilda, whom he had met on the road home, arrived. They each and all expressed the liveliest astonishment at the news. Mr Wiseman, in particular, looked perturbed, and the looks he bent on the smiling face of his wife were full of pathetic perplexity. Then the couple who formed the subject of discussion arrived from the garden. Lavinia at once darted to her room so as to conceal her blushes, and Mr Bloxam immediately requested the other two gentlemen to accompany him to the study for the purpose of discussing a matter of most serious importance. Matilda hastened to congratulate Lavinia, and Mrs Wiseman, with a certain amount of trepidation noticeable in her mien, went off to prepare for luncheon.
Mrs Wiseman was nervously preparing a salad in the pantry when she received a message requesting her immediate presence in the study. After the victorious climax to her insidious machinations a reaction had set in, and she now felt distinctly uncomfortable. When she entered the study she found her husband at his desk, with a Rhadamanthine expression on his usually serene face. Mr Winterton was sitting at his left hand, looking like the assessor of a Nonconformist Holy Office, and Mr Bloxam was standing before the two in the attitude and with the expression as of a stout, middle-aged accusing angel. Before Rhadamanthus was outspread the incriminating letter. A solemn silence reigned in the chamber, and the partially drawn curtain caused an appropriate gloom. Under the stress of the situation Mrs Wiseman completely regained her self-possession, and her look of guilelessness clothed her like an armour of proof. Mr Winterton arose and politely handed her a chair.
“Louisa,” said Mr Wiseman, in a Rhadamanthine tone, “Mr Bloxam has brought a very unpleasant matter to our notice—a matter which, I regret to say, seriously affects the character of one who is our guest, but who is, I fear, not a fit inmate for any Christian household.”
“Dear me,” said Mrs Wiseman, “what a dreadful thing; but whoever can it be?”
“I regret to have to tell you that the person I refer to is Miss Mason.”