A Lady of Quality<br />Being a Most Curious, Hitherto Unknown History, as Related by Mr. Isaac Bicke by Frances Hodgson Burnett (ebooks that read to you .txt) 📕

threshold, and she did with heaving breast.  She approached the bed and gazed; she dared to touch the scented gloves that lay by the outspread petticoat of blue and silver; she even laid a trembling finger upon the pointed bodice, which was so slender that it seemed small enough for even a child.

“Ah me,” she sighed gently, “how beautiful she will be!  How beautiful!  And all of them will fall at her feet, as is not to be wondered at.  And it was always so all her life, even when she was an infant, and all gave her her will because of her beauty and her power.  She hath a great power.  Barbara and I are not so.  We are dull and weak, and dare not speak our minds.  It is as if we were creatures of another world; but He who rules all things has so willed it for us.  He has given it to us for our portion—our portion.”

Her dull, poor face dropped a little as she spoke the words, and her eyes fell upon the beauteous tiny shoes, which seemed to trample even when no foot was within them.  She stooped to take one in her hand, but as she was about to lift it something which seemed to have been dropped upon the floor, and to have rolled beneath the valance of the bed, touched her hand.  It was a thing to which a riband was attached—an ivory miniature—and she picked it up wondering.  She stood up gazing at it, in such bewilderment to find her eyes upon it that she scarce knew what she did.  She did not mean to pry; she would not have had the daring so to do if she had possessed the inclination.  But the instant her eyes told her what they saw, she started and blushed as she had never blushed before in her tame life.  The warm rose mantled her cheeks, and even suffused the neck her chaste kerchief hid.  Her eye kindled with admiration and an emotion new to her indeed.

“How beautiful!” she said.  “He is like a young Adonis, and has the bearing of a royal prince!  How can it—by what strange chance hath it come here?”

She had not regarded it more than long enough to have uttered these words, when a fear came upon her, and she felt that she had fallen into misfortune.

“What must I do with it?” she trembled.  “What will she say, whether she knows of its being within the chamber or not?  She will be angry with me that I have dared to touch it.  What shall I do?”

She regarded it again with eyes almost suffused.  Her blush and the sensibility of her emotion gave to her plain countenance a new liveliness of tint and expression.

“I will put it back where I found it,” she said, “and the one who knows it will find it later.  It cannot be she—it cannot be she!  If I laid it on her table she would rate me bitterly—and she can be bitter when she will.”

She bent and placed it within the shadow of the valance again, and as she felt it touch the hard oak of the polished floor her bosom rose with a soft sigh.

“It is an unseemly thing to do,” she said; “’tis as though one were uncivil; but I dare not—I dare not do otherwise.”

She would have turned to leave the apartment, being much overcome by the incident, but just as she would have done so she heard the sound of horses’ feet through the window by which she must pass, and looked out to see if it was Clorinda who was returning from her ride.  Mistress Clorinda was a matchless horsewoman, and a marvel of loveliness and spirit she looked when she rode, sitting upon a horse such as no other woman dared to mount—always an animal of the greatest beauty, but of so dangerous a spirit that her riding-whip was loaded like a man’s.

This time it was not she; and when Mistress Anne beheld the young gentleman who had drawn rein in the court she started backward and put her hand to her heart, the blood mantling her pale cheek again in a flood.  But having started back, the next instant she started forward to gaze again, all her timid soul in her eyes.

“’Tis he!” she panted; “’tis he himself!  He hath come in hope to speak with my sister, and she is abroad.  Poor gentleman, he hath come in such high spirit, and must ride back heavy of heart.  How comely, and how finely clad he is!”

He was, in sooth, with his rich riding-habit, his handsome face, his plumed hat, and the sun shining on the fair luxuriant locks which fell beneath it.  It was Sir John Oxon, and he was habited as when he rode in the park in town and the court was there.  Not so were attired the country gentry whom Anne had been wont to see, though many of them were well mounted, knowing horseflesh and naught else, as they did.

She pressed her cheek against the side of the oriel window, over which the ivy grew thickly.  She was so intent that she could not withdraw her gaze.  She watched him as he turned away, having received his dismissal, and she pressed her face closer that she might follow him as he rode down the long avenue of oak-trees, his servant riding behind.

Thus she bent forward gazing, until he turned and the oaks hid him from her sight; and even then the spell was not dissolved, and she still regarded the place where he had passed, until a sound behind her made her start violently.  It was a peal of laughter, high and rich, and when she so started and turned to see whom it might be, she beheld her sister Clorinda, who was standing just within the threshold, as if movement had been arrested by what had met her eye as she came in.  Poor Anne put her hand to her side again.

“Oh sister!” she gasped; “oh sister!” but could say no more.

She saw that she had thought falsely, and that Clorinda had not been out at all, for she was in home attire; and even in the midst of her trepidation there sprang into Anne’s mind the awful thought that through some servant’s blunder the comely young visitor had been sent away.  For herself, she expected but to be driven forth with wrathful, disdainful words for her presumption.  For what else could she hope from this splendid creature, who, while of her own flesh and blood, had never seemed to regard her as being more than a poor superfluous underling?  But strangely enough, there was no anger in Clorinda’s eyes; she but laughed, as though what she had seen had made her merry.

“You here, Anne,” she said, “and looking with light-mindedness after gallant gentlemen!  Mistress Margery should see to this and watch more closely, or we shall have unseemly stories told.  You, sister, with your modest face and bashfulness!  I had not thought it of you.”

Suddenly she crossed the room to where her sister stood drooping, and seized her by the shoulder, so that she could look her well in the face.

“What,” she said, with a mocking not quite harsh—“What is this?  Does a glance at a fine gallant, even taken from behind an oriel window, make such change indeed?  I never before saw this look, nor this colour, forsooth; it hath improved thee wondrously, Anne—wondrously.”

“Sister,” faltered Anne, “I so desired to see your birth-night ball-gown, of which Mistress Margery hath much spoken—I so desired—I thought it would not matter if, the door being open and it spread forth upon the bed—I—I stole a look at it.  And then I was tempted—and came in.”

“And then was tempted more,” Clorinda laughed, still regarding her downcast countenance shrewdly, “by a thing far less to be resisted—a fine gentleman from town, with love-locks falling on his shoulders and ladies’ hearts strung at his saddle-bow by scores.  Which found you the most beautiful?”

“Your gown is splendid, sister,” said Anne, with modest shyness.  “There will be no beauty who will wear another like it; or should there be one, she will not carry it as you will.”

“But the man—the man, Anne,” Clorinda laughed again.  “What of the man?”

Anne plucked up just enough of her poor spirit to raise her eyes to the brilliant ones that mocked at her.

“With such gentlemen, sister,” she said, “is it like that I have aught to do?”

Mistress Clorinda dropped her hand and left laughing.

“’Tis true,” she said, “it is not; but for this one time, Anne, thou lookest almost a woman.”

“’Tis not beauty alone that makes womanhood,” said Anne, her head on her breast again.  “In some book I have read that—that it is mostly pain.  I am woman enough for that.”

“You have read—you have read,” quoted Clorinda.  “You are the bookworm, I remember, and filch romances and poems from the shelves.  And you have read that it is mostly pain that makes a woman?  ’Tis not true.  ’Tis a poor lie.  I am a woman and I do not suffer—for I will not, that I swear!  And when I take an oath I keep it, mark you!  It is men women suffer for; that was what your scholar meant—for such fine gentlemen as the one you have just watched while he rode away.  More fools they!  No man shall make me womanly in such a fashion, I promise you!  Let them wince and kneel; I will not.”

“Sister,” Anne faltered, “I thought you were not within.  The gentleman who rode away—did the servants know?”

“That did they,” quoth Clorinda, mocking again.  “They knew that I would not receive him to-day, and so sent him away.  He might have known as much himself, but he is an arrant popinjay, and thinks all women wish to look at his fine shape, and hear him flatter them when he is in the mood.”

“You would not—let him enter?”

Clorinda threw her graceful body into a chair with more light laughter.

“I would not,” she answered.  “You cannot understand such ingratitude, poor Anne; you would have treated him more softly.  Sit down and talk to me, and I will show thee my furbelows myself.  All women like to chatter of their laced bodices and petticoats.  That is what makes a woman.”

Anne was tremulous with relief and pleasure.  It was as if a queen had bid her to be seated.  She sat almost with the humble lack of ease a serving-woman might have shown.  She had never seen Clorinda wear such an air before, and never had she dreamed that she would so open herself to any fellow-creature.  She knew but little of what her sister was capable—of the brilliancy of her charm when she chose to condescend, of the deigning softness of her manner when she chose to please, of her arch-pleasantries and cutting wit, and of the strange power she could wield over any human being, gentle or simple, with whom she came in contact.  But if she had not known of these things before, she learned to know them this morning.  For some reason best known to herself, Mistress Clorinda was in a high good humour.  She kept Anne with her for more than an hour, and was dazzling through every moment of its passing.  She showed her the splendours she was to shine in at the birth-night ball, even bringing forth her jewels and displaying them.  She told her stories of the house of which the young heir to-day attained his majority, and mocked at the poor youth because he was ungainly, and at a distance had been her slave since his nineteenth year.

“I have scarce looked at him,” she said.  “He is a lout, with great eyes staring, and a red nose.  It does not need that one should look at men to win them.  They look at us, and that is enough.”

To poor Mistress Anne, who had seen no company and listened to no wits, the entertainment bestowed upon her was as wonderful as a night at the playhouse would have been.  To watch the vivid changing face; to hearken to jesting stories of men and women who seemed like the heroes and heroines of her romances; to hear love itself—the love she trembled and palpitated at the mere thought of—spoken of openly as an experience which fell to all; to hear it mocked at with dainty or biting quips; to learn that women of all ages played with, enjoyed, or lost themselves for it—it was with her as if a nun had been withdrawn from her cloister and plunged into the vortex of the world.

“Sister,” she said, looking at the Beauty with humble, adoring eyes, “you make me feel that my romances are true.  You tell such things.  It is like seeing pictures of things to hear you talk.  No wonder that all listen to you, for indeed ’tis wonderful