Old Ursula forked the rashers onto a hot plate and looked at Bess meaningly, wagging a lean forefinger to give emphasis to her words.
“You must be shy of Dan,” she said, shrewdly.
“Shy, mother?”
“The great fool is a rough, masterful dog. Throw him a bone now and then, lass, to keep him from growing surly. He’s no mate for you, girl, the great, black-faced oaf. David’s the lad to make a good husband. You must be shy of Dan, Bess.”
The girl swept her black hair over her ears, laughed, and began to bustle about the kitchen.
“I can take care of myself, mother,” she said.
“Better be your own mistress, lass, than let Black Dan have the handling of your love.”
Thus a certain superficial similarity may be traced between the lots of Richard Jeffray and Bess of the Woods. Both had a garrulous and world-wise relative to stem with the calthrops of caution the careless confidence of youth. While old Ursula pattered in the inglenook of Black Dan’s ugliness of face and temper, and extolled the blond David for his red cheeks and good-humored eyes, the Lady Letitia would ask her nephew with the greatest gravity, “What color Miss Jilian fancied for her hair this season? Had Miss Hardacre had that front tooth replaced? Had Richard ever heard of the Soakington affair, when Miss Jilian had eloped with Ensign Soakington of a marching regiment, and had been overtaken and brought back unmarried by Sir Peter? Yes, it was quite true that Miss Hardacre had spent the night with the ensign at an inn at Reigate before Sir Peter and Brother Lot had ended the romance with their whips. What! Richard had not heard the tale! Well, it was an old scandal, and had happened ten years ago. Yes, there had been other affairs. Sir Peter was wise in desiring to get his daughter married.”
Now Richard Jeffray was a sensitive youth, and though the Lady Letitia’s sarcasms gored him beneath his air of amiable patience, he was not a little disturbed by her gibes and her innuendoes. Richard had inherited a chivalrous temper from his father, and he was something of a young Quixote in his notions of honor. Certainly he had often idled beside Miss Jilian’s tambour-frame, attended her as she warbled at the harpsichord, danced and ridden with her, gazed into her gray eyes with a fervor that was not platonic. Miss Hardacre had been very kind to him, so had Sir Peter, and even Cousin Lot, in his insolent and patronizing way. Moreover, the Lady Letitia herself was not a white statue of truth and candor. Richard knew that she cheated poor Sugg at cards, rouged and powdered, and wore false eyebrows. And surely Miss Jilian was a very handsome young lady, and if she dressed somewhat gaudily, it was fashion’s fault and not her own. Richard supposed that most young ladies had indulged in love affairs in their teens. Had not he himself when a boy ogled Dr. Sugg’s daughter Mary for weeks together? And in Italy he had even imagined a little opera singer to be the finest feminine creation the world had ever doted upon.
Thus the amiable and generous assling conceived that it would be a gross piece of dishonor on his part were he to treat Miss Jilian Hardacre after the fashion that the Lady Letitia advised. By reason of the extreme delicacy of his sentiment he felt himself impelled rather to exaggerate his courtesies to that young lady, lest he should be charged with trifling with the pure peace of a spinster’s heart. It was not that Richard stood altogether in awe of Cousin Lancelot’s hectoring courage. Jeffray was no coward, though a dreamer. Very possibly his aunt’s cynicisms had operated in a contrary direction to that which the old pharmaceutist had intended. Contradiction begets contrariness; pessimism preens the wings of ardor. It may have been that the lad’s innate sense of chivalry was stirred, and that the lamps in that gorgeous Temple of Beauty flashed a bewitching glamour into Richard’s soul. At all events, he did not slink like a dishonest cur from the maligned maiden’s side. He still continued to kiss her hand, and to admire her profile, a little forcefully perhaps, as she sat and played to him on the harpsichord.