When Miss Newcome and her maid entered the Brighton station, did Mr. Clive, by another singular coincidence, happen also to be there? What more natural and dutiful than that he should go and see his aunt, Miss Honeyman? What more proper than that Miss Ethel should pass the Saturday and Sunday with her sick father; and take a couple of wholesome nights’ rest after those five weary past evenings, for each of which we may reckon a couple of soirées and a ball? And that relations should travel together, the young lady being protected by her femme-de-chambre; that surely, as every one must allow, was perfectly right and proper.
That a biographer should profess to know everything which passes, even in a confidential talk in a first-class carriage between two lovers, seems perfectly absurd; not that grave historians do not pretend to the same wonderful degree of knowledge—reporting meetings of the most occult of conspirators; private interviews between monarchs and their ministers, even the secret thoughts and motives of those personages, which possibly the persons themselves did not know;—all for which the present writer will pledge his known character for veracity is, that on a certain day certain parties had a conversation, of which the upshot was so-and-so. He guesses, of course, at a great deal of what took place; knowing the characters, and being informed at some time of their meeting. You do not suppose that I bribed the femme-de-chambre, or that those two City gents, who sate in the same carriage with our young friends, and could not hear a word they said, reported their talk to me? If Clive and Ethel had had a coupe to themselves, I would yet boldly tell what took place, but the coupe was taken by other three young City gents who smoked the whole way.
“Well, then,” the bonnet begins close up to the hat, “tell me, sir, is it true that you were so very much épris of the Miss Freemans at Rome; and that afterwards you were so wonderfully attentive to the third Miss Baliol? Did you draw her portrait? You know you drew her portrait. You painters always pretend to admire girls with auburn hair, because Titian and Raphael painted it. Has the Fornarina red hair? Why, we are at Croydon, I declare!”
“The Fornarina”—the hat replies to the bonnet, “if that picture at the Borghese Palace be an original, or a likeness of her—is not a handsome woman, with vulgar eyes and mouth, and altogether a most mahogany-coloured person. She is so plain, in fact, I think that very likely it is the real woman; for it is with their own fancies that men fall in love,—or rather every woman is handsome to the lover. You know how old Helen must have been.”
“I don’t know any such thing, or anything about her. Who was Helen?” asks the bonnet; and indeed she did not know.
“It’s a long story, and such an old scandal now, that there is no use in repeating it,” says Clive.
“You only talk about Helen because you wish to turn away the conversation from Miss Freeman,” cries the young lady—“from Miss Baliol, I mean.”
“We will talk about whichever you please. Which shall we begin to pull to pieces?” says Clive. You see, to be in this carriage—to be actually with her—to be looking into those wonderful lucid eyes—to see her sweet mouth dimpling, and hear her sweet voice ringing with its delicious laughter—to have that hour and a half his own, in spite of all the world-dragons, grandmothers, convenances, the future—made the young fellow so happy, filled his whole frame and spirit with a delight so keen, that no wonder he was gay, and brisk, and lively.
“And so you knew of my goings-on?” he asked. O me! they were at Reigate by this time; there was Gatton Park flying before them on the wings of the wind.
“I know of a number of things,” says the bonnet, nodding with ambrosial curls.