“Shepherd’s Inn! what can you want in Shepherd’s Inn, Miss Blanche?” Bonner inquired. “Mr. Strong lives there. Do you want to go and see the Captain?”
“I should like to see the Captain very well. I like the Captain; but it is not him I want. I want to see a dear little good girl, who was very kind to—to Mr. Arthur when he was so ill last year, and saved his life almost; and I want to thank her and ask her if she would like anything. I looked out several of my dresses on purpose this morning, Bonner!” and she looked at Bonner as if she had a right to admiration, and had performed an act of remarkable virtue. Blanche, indeed, was very fond of sugar-plums; she would have fed the poor upon them, when she had had enough, and given a country girl a ball-dress, when she had worn it and was tired of it.
“Pretty girl—pretty young woman!” mumbled Mrs. Bonner. “I know I want no pretty young women to come about Lightfoot,” and in imagination she peopled the Clavering Arms with a harem of the most hideous chambermaids and barmaids.
Blanche, with pink and blue, and feathers, and flowers, and trinkets (that wondrous invention, a chatelaine, was not extant yet, or she would have had one, we may be sure), and a shot-silk dress, and a wonderful mantle, and a charming parasol, presented a vision of elegance and beauty such as bewildered the eyes of Mrs. Bolton, who was scrubbing the lodge-floor of Shepherd’s Inn and caused Betsy-Jane and Ameliar-Ann to look with delight.
Blanche looked on them with a smile of ineffable sweetness and protection; like Rowena going to see Rebecca; like Marie Antoinette visiting the poor in the famine; like the Marchioness of Carabas alighting from her carriage-and-four at a pauper-tenant’s door, and taking from John No II. the packet of Epsom salts for the invalid’s benefit, carrying it with her own imperial hand into the sick-room—Blanche felt a queen stepping down from her throne to visit a subject, and enjoyed all the bland consciousness of doing a good action.
“My good woman! I want to see Fanny—Fanny Bolton; is she here?”
Mrs. Bolton had a sudden suspicion, from the splendour of Blanche’s appearance, that it must be a play-actor, or something worse.
“What do you want with Fanny, pray?” she asked.
“I am Lady Clavering’s daughter—you have heard of Sir Francis Clavering? And I wish very much indeed to see Fanny Bolton.”
“Pray step in, miss.—Betsy-Jane, where’s Fanny?”