<h2>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
<p>Merry days were these at Thornfield Hall; and busy days too:
how different from the first three months of stillness, monotony,
and solitude I had passed beneath its roof! All sad
feelings seemed now driven from the house, all gloomy
associations forgotten: there was life everywhere, movement all
day long. You could not now traverse the gallery, once so
hushed, nor enter the front chambers, once so tenantless, without
encountering a smart lady’s-maid or a dandy valet.</p>
<p>The kitchen, the butler’s pantry, the servants’
hall, the entrance hall, were equally alive; and the saloons were
only left void and still when the blue sky and halcyon sunshine
of the genial spring weather called their occupants out into the
grounds. Even when that weather was broken, and continuous
rain set in for some days, no damp seemed cast over enjoyment:
indoor amusements only became more lively and varied, in
consequence of the stop put to outdoor gaiety.</p>
<p>I wondered what they were going to do the first evening a
change of entertainment was proposed: they spoke of
“playing charades,” but in my ignorance I did not
understand the term. The servants were called in, the
dining-room tables wheeled away, the lights otherwise disposed,
the chairs placed in a semicircle opposite the arch. While
Mr. Rochester and the other gentlemen directed these alterations,
the ladies were running up and down stairs ringing for their
maids. Mrs. Fairfax was summoned to give information
respecting the resources of the house in shawls, dresses,
draperies of any kind; and certain wardrobes of the third storey
were ransacked, and their contents, in the shape of brocaded and
hooped petticoats, satin sacques, black modes, lace lappets,
&c., were brought down in armfuls by the abigails; then a
selection was made, and such things as were chosen were carried
to the boudoir within the drawing-room.</p>
<p>Meantime, Mr. Rochester had again summoned the ladies round
him, and was selecting certain of their number to be of his
party. “Miss Ingram is mine, of course,” said
he: afterwards he named the two Misses Eshton, and Mrs.
Dent. He looked at me: I happened to be near him, as I had
been fastening the clasp of Mrs. Dent’s bracelet, which had
got loose.</p>
<p>“Will you play?” he asked. I shook my
head. He did not insist, which I rather feared he would
have done; he allowed me to return quietly to my usual seat.</p>
<p>He and his aids now withdrew behind the curtain: the other
party, which was headed by Colonel Dent, sat down on the crescent
of chairs. One of the gentlemen, Mr. Eshton, observing me,
seemed to propose that I should be asked to join them; but Lady
Ingram instantly negatived the notion.</p>
<p>“No,” I heard her say: “she looks too stupid
for any game of the sort.”</p>
<p>Ere long a bell tinkled, and the curtain drew up. Within
the arch, the bulky figure of Sir George Lynn, whom Mr. Rochester
had likewise chosen, was seen enveloped in a white sheet: before
him, on a table, lay open a large book; and at his side stood Amy
Eshton, draped in Mr. Rochester’s cloak, and holding a book
in her hand. Somebody, unseen, rang the bell merrily; then
Adèle (who had insisted on being one of her
guardian’s party), bounded forward, scattering round her
the contents of a basket of flowers she carried on her arm.
Then appeared the magnificent figure of Miss Ingram, clad in
white, a long veil on her head, and a wreath of roses round her
brow; by her side walked Mr. Rochester, and together they drew
near the table. They knelt; while Mrs. Dent and Louisa
Eshton, dressed also in white, took up their stations behind
them. A ceremony followed, in dumb show, in which it was
easy to recognise the pantomime of a marriage. At its
termination, Colonel Dent and his party consulted in whispers for
two minutes, then the Colonel called out—</p>
<p>“Bride!” Mr. Rochester bowed, and the curtain
fell.</p>
<p>A considerable interval elapsed before it again rose.
Its second rising displayed a more elaborately prepared scene
than the last. The drawing-room, as I have before observed,
was raised two steps above the dining-room, and on the top of the
upper step, placed a yard or two back within the room, appeared a
large marble basin—which I recognised as an ornament of the
conservatory—where it usually stood, surrounded by exotics,
and tenanted by gold fish—and whence it must have been
transported with some trouble, on account of its size and
weight.</p>
<p>Seated on the carpet, by the side of this basin, was seen Mr.
Rochester, costumed in shawls, with a turban on his head.
His dark eyes and swarthy skin and Paynim features suited the
costume exactly: he looked the very model of an Eastern emir, an
agent or a victim of the bowstring. Presently advanced into
view Miss Ingram. She, too, was attired in oriental
fashion: a crimson scarf tied sash-like round the waist: an
embroidered handkerchief knotted about her temples; her
beautifully-moulded arms bare, one of them upraised in the act of
supporting a pitcher, poised gracefully on her head. Both
her cast of form and feature, her complexion and her general air,
suggested the idea of some Israelitish princess of the
patriarchal days; and such was doubtless the character she
intended to represent.</p>
<p>She approached the basin, and bent over it as if to fill her
pitcher; she again lifted it to her head. The personage on
the well-brink now seemed to accost her; to make some
request:—“She hasted, let down her pitcher on her
hand, and gave him to drink.” From the bosom of his
robe he then produced a casket, opened it and showed magnificent
bracelets and earrings; she acted astonishment and admiration;
kneeling, he laid the treasure at her feet; incredulity and
delight were expressed by her looks and gestures; the stranger
fastened the bracelets on her arms and the rings in her
ears. It was Eliezer and Rebecca: the camels only were
wanting.</p>
<p>The divining party again laid their heads together: apparently
they could not agree about the word or syllable the scene
illustrated. Colonel Dent, their spokesman, demanded
“the tableau of the whole;” whereupon the curtain
again descended.</p>
<p>On its third rising only a portion of the drawing-room was
disclosed; the rest being concealed by a screen, hung with some
sort of dark and coarse drapery. The marble basin was
removed; in its place, stood a deal table and a kitchen chair:
these objects were visible by a very dim light proceeding from a
horn lantern, the wax candles being all extinguished.</p>
<p>Amidst this sordid scene, sat a man with his clenched hands
resting on his knees, and his eyes bent on the ground. I
knew Mr. Rochester; though the begrimed face, the disordered
dress (his coat hanging loose from one arm, as if it had been
almost torn from his back in a scuffle), the desperate and
scowling countenance, the rough, bristling hair might well have
disguised him. As he moved, a chain clanked; to his wrists
were attached fetters.</p>
<p>“Bridewell!” exclaimed Colonel Dent, and the
charade was solved.</p>
<p>A sufficient interval having elapsed for the performers to
resume their ordinary costume, they re-entered the
dining-room. Mr. Rochester led in Miss Ingram; she was
complimenting him on his acting.</p>
<p>“Do you know,” said she, “that, of the three
characters, I liked you in the last best? Oh, had you but
lived a few years earlier, what a gallant gentleman-highwayman
you would have made!”</p>
<p>“Is all the soot washed from my face?” he asked,
turning it towards her.</p>
<p>“Alas! yes: the more’s the pity! Nothing
could be more becoming to your complexion than that
ruffian’s rouge.”</p>
<p>“You would like a hero of the road then?”</p>
<p>“An English hero of the road would be the next best
thing to an Italian bandit; and that could only be surpassed by a
Levantine pirate.”</p>
<p>“Well, whatever I am, remember you are my wife; we were
married an hour since, in the presence of all these
witnesses.” She giggled, and her colour rose.</p>
<p>“Now, Dent,” continued Mr. Rochester, “it is
your turn.” And as the other party withdrew, he and
his band took the vacated seats. Miss Ingram placed herself
at her leader’s right hand; the other diviners filled the
chairs on each side of him and her. I did not now watch the
actors; I no longer waited with interest for the curtain to rise;
my attention was absorbed by the spectators; my eyes, erewhile
fixed on the arch, were now irresistibly attracted to the
semicircle of chairs. What charade Colonel Dent and his
party played, what word they chose, how they acquitted
themselves, I no longer remember; but I still see the
consultation which followed each scene: I see Mr. Rochester turn
to Miss Ingram, and Miss Ingram to him; I see her incline her
head towards him, till the jetty curls almost touch his shoulder
and wave against his cheek; I hear their mutual whisperings; I
recall their interchanged glances; and something even of the
feeling roused by the spectacle returns in memory at this
moment.</p>
<p>I have told you, reader, that I had learnt to love Mr.
Rochester: I could not unlove him now, merely because I found
that he had ceased to notice me—because I might pass hours
in his presence, and he would never once turn his eyes in my
direction—because I saw all his attentions appropriated by
a great lady, who scorned to touch me with the hem of her robes
as she passed; who, if ever her dark and imperious eye fell on me
by chance, would withdraw it instantly as from an object too mean
to merit observation. I could not unlove him, because I
felt sure he would soon marry this very lady—because I read
daily in her a proud security in his intentions respecting
her—because I witnessed hourly in him a style of courtship
which, if careless and choosing rather to be sought than to seek,
was yet, in its very carelessness, captivating, and in its very
pride, irresistible.</p>
<p>There was nothing to cool or banish love in these
circumstances, though much to create despair. Much too, you
will think, reader, to engender jealousy: if a woman, in my
position, could presume to be jealous of a woman in Miss
Ingram’s. But I was not jealous: or very
rarely;—the nature of the pain I suffered could not be
explained by that word. Miss Ingram was a mark beneath
jealousy: she was too inferior to excite the feeling.
Pardon the seeming paradox; I mean what I say. She was very
showy, but she was not genuine: she had a fine person, many
brilliant attainments; but her mind was poor, her heart barren by
nature: nothing bloomed spontaneously on that soil; no unforced
natural fruit delighted by its freshness. She was not good;
she was not original: she used to repeat sounding phrases from
books: she never offered, nor had, an opinion of her own.
She advocated a high tone of sentiment; but she did not know the
sensations of sympathy and pity; tenderness and truth were not in
her. Too often she betrayed this, by the undue vent she
gave to a spiteful antipathy she had conceived against little
Adèle: pushing her away with some contumelious epithet if
she happened to approach her; sometimes ordering her from the
room, and always treating her with coldness and acrimony.
Other eyes besides mine watched these manifestations of
character—watched them closely, keenly, shrewdly.
Yes; the future bridegroom, Mr. Rochester himself, exercised over
his intended a ceaseless surveillance; and it was from this
sagacity—this guardedness of his—this perfect, clear
consciousness of his fair one’s defects—this obvious
absence of passion in his sentiments towards her, that my
ever-torturing pain arose.</p>
<p>I saw he was going to marry her, for family, perhaps political
reasons, because her rank and connections suited him; I felt he
had not given her his love, and that her qualifications were ill
adapted to win from him that treasure. This was the
point—this was where the nerve was touched and
teased—this was where the fever was sustained and fed:
<i>she could not charm him</i>.</p>
<p>If she had managed the victory at once, and he had yielded and
sincerely laid his heart at her feet, I should have covered my
face, turned to the wall, and (figuratively) have died to
them. If Miss Ingram had been a good and noble woman,
endowed with force, fervour, kindness, sense, I should have had
one vital struggle with two tigers—jealousy and despair:
then, my heart torn out and devoured, I should have admired
her—acknowledged her excellence, and been quiet for the
rest of my days: and the more absolute her superiority, the
deeper would have been my admiration—the more truly
tranquil my quiescence. But as matters really stood, to
watch Miss Ingram’s efforts at fascinating Mr. Rochester,
to witness their repeated failure—herself unconscious that
they did fail; vainly fancying that each shaft launched hit the
mark, and infatuatedly pluming herself on success, when her pride
and self-complacency repelled further and further what she wished
to allure—to witness <i>this</i>, was to be at once under
ceaseless excitation and ruthless restraint.</p>
<p>Because, when she failed, I saw how she might have
succeeded. Arrows that continually glanced off from Mr.
Rochester’s breast and fell harmless at his feet, might, I
knew, if shot by a surer hand, have quivered keen in his proud
heart—have called love into his stern eye, and softness
into his sardonic face; or, better still, without weapons a
silent conquest might have been won.</p>
<p>“Why can she not influence him more, when she is
privileged to draw so near to him?” I asked myself.
“Surely she cannot truly like him, or not like him with
true affection! If she did, she need not coin her smiles so
lavishly, flash her glances so unremittingly, manufacture airs so
elaborate, graces so multitudinous. It seems to me that she
might, by merely sitting quietly at his side, saying little and
looking less, get nigher his heart. I have seen in his face
a far different expression from that which hardens it now while
she is so vivaciously accosting him; but then it came of itself:
it was not elicited by meretricious arts and calculated
manoeuvres; and one had but to accept it—to answer what he
asked without pretension, to address him when needful without
grimace—and it increased and grew kinder and more genial,
and warmed one like a fostering sunbeam. How will she
manage to please him when they are married? I do not think
she will manage it; and yet it might be managed; and his wife
might, I verily believe, be the very happiest woman the sun
shines on.”</p>
<p>I have not yet said anything condemnatory of Mr.
Rochester’s project of marrying for interest and
connections. It surprised me when I first discovered that
such was his intention: I had thought him a man unlikely to be
influenced by motives so commonplace in his choice of a wife; but
the longer I considered the position, education, &c., of the
parties, the less I felt justified in judging and blaming either
him or Miss Ingram for acting in conformity to ideas and
principles instilled into them, doubtless, from their
childhood. All their class held these principles: I
supposed, then, they had reasons for holding them such as I could
not fathom. It seemed to me that, were I a gentleman like
him, I would take to my bosom only such a wife as I could love;
but the very obviousness of the advantages to the husband’s
own happiness offered by this plan convinced me that there must
be arguments against its general adoption of which I was quite
ignorant: otherwise I felt sure all the world would act as I
wished to act.</p>
<p>But in other points, as well as this, I was growing very
lenient to my master: I was forgetting all his faults, for which
I had once kept a sharp look-out. It had formerly been my
endeavour to study all sides of his character: to take the bad
with the good; and from the just weighing of both, to form an
equitable judgment. Now I saw no bad. The sarcasm
that had repelled, the harshness that had startled me once, were
only like keen condiments in a choice dish: their presence was
pungent, but their absence would be felt as comparatively
insipid. And as for the vague something—was it a
sinister or a sorrowful, a designing or a desponding
expression?—that opened upon a careful observer, now and
then, in his eye, and closed again before one could fathom the
strange depth partially disclosed; that something which used to
make me fear and shrink, as if I had been wandering amongst
volcanic-looking hills, and had suddenly felt the ground quiver
and seen it gape: that something, I, at intervals, beheld still;
and with throbbing heart, but not with palsied nerves.
Instead of wishing to shun, I longed only to dare—to divine
it; and I thought Miss Ingram happy, because one day she might
look into the abyss at her leisure, explore its secrets and
analyse their nature.</p>
<p>Meantime, while I thought only of my master and his future
bride—saw only them, heard only their discourse, and
considered only their movements of importance—the rest of
the party were occupied with their own separate interests and
pleasures. The Ladies Lynn and Ingram continued to consort
in solemn conferences, where they nodded their two turbans at
each other, and held up their four hands in confronting gestures
of surprise, or mystery, or horror, according to the theme on
which their gossip ran, like a pair of magnified puppets.
Mild Mrs. Dent talked with good-natured Mrs. Eshton; and the two
sometimes bestowed a courteous word or smile on me. Sir
George Lynn, Colonel Dent, and Mr. Eshton discussed politics, or
county affairs, or justice business. Lord Ingram flirted
with Amy Eshton; Louisa played and sang to and with one of the
Messrs. Lynn; and Mary Ingram listened languidly to the gallant
speeches of the other. Sometimes all, as with one consent,
suspended their by-play to observe and listen to the principal
actors: for, after all, Mr. Rochester and—because closely
connected with him—Miss Ingram were the life and soul of
the party. If he was absent from the room an hour, a
perceptible dulness seemed to steal over the spirits of his
guests; and his re-entrance was sure to give a fresh impulse to
the vivacity of conversation.</p>
<p>The want of his animating influence appeared to be peculiarly
felt one day that he had been summoned to Millcote on business,
and was not likely to return till late. The afternoon was
wet: a walk the party had proposed to take to see a gipsy camp,
lately pitched on a common beyond Hay, was consequently
deferred. Some of the gentlemen were gone to the stables:
the younger ones, together with the younger ladies, were playing
billiards in the billiard-room. The dowagers Ingram and
Lynn sought solace in a quiet game at cards. Blanche
Ingram, after having repelled, by supercilious taciturnity, some
efforts of Mrs. Dent and Mrs. Eshton to draw her into
conversation, had first murmured over some sentimental tunes and
airs on the piano, and then, having fetched a novel from the
library, had flung herself in haughty listlessness on a sofa, and
prepared to beguile, by the spell of fiction, the tedious hours
of absence. The room and the house were silent: only now
and then the merriment of the billiard-players was heard from
above.</p>
<p>It was verging on dusk, and the clock had already given
warning of the hour to dress for dinner, when little
Adèle, who knelt by me in the drawing-room window-seat,
suddenly exclaimed—</p>
<p>“Voilà, Monsieur Rochester, qui
revient!”</p>
<p>I turned, and Miss Ingram darted forwards from her sofa: the
others, too, looked up from their several occupations; for at the
same time a crunching of wheels and a splashing tramp of
horse-hoofs became audible on the wet gravel. A post-chaise
was approaching.</p>
<p>“What can possess him to come home in that style?”
said Miss Ingram. “He rode Mesrour (the black horse),
did he not, when he went out? and Pilot was with him:—what
has he done with the animals?”</p>
<p>As she said this, she approached her tall person and ample
garments so near the window, that I was obliged to bend back
almost to the breaking of my spine: in her eagerness she did not
observe me at first, but when she did, she curled her lip and
moved to another casement. The post-chaise stopped; the
driver rang the door-bell, and a gentleman alighted attired in
travelling garb; but it was not Mr. Rochester; it was a tall,
fashionable-looking man, a stranger.</p>
<p>“How provoking!” exclaimed Miss Ingram: “you
tiresome monkey!” (apostrophising Adèle), “who
perched you up in the window to give false intelligence?”
and she cast on me an angry glance, as if I were in fault.</p>
<p>Some parleying was audible in the hall, and soon the new-comer
entered. He bowed to Lady Ingram, as deeming her the eldest
lady present.</p>
<p>“It appears I come at an inopportune time, madam,”
said he, “when my friend, Mr. Rochester, is from home; but
I arrive from a very long journey, and I think I may presume so
far on old and intimate acquaintance as to instal myself here
till he returns.”</p>
<p>His manner was polite; his accent, in speaking, struck me as
being somewhat unusual,—not precisely foreign, but still
not altogether English: his age might be about Mr.
Rochester’s,—between thirty and forty; his complexion
was singularly sallow: otherwise he was a fine-looking man, at
first sight especially. On closer examination, you detected
something in his face that displeased, or rather that failed to
please. His features were regular, but too relaxed: his eye
was large and well cut, but the life looking out of it was a
tame, vacant life—at least so I thought.</p>
<p>The sound of the dressing-bell dispersed the party. It
was not till after dinner that I saw him again: he then seemed
quite at his ease. But I liked his physiognomy even less
than before: it struck me as being at the same time unsettled and
inanimate. His eye wandered, and had no meaning in its
wandering: this gave him an odd look, such as I never remembered
to have seen. For a handsome and not an unamiable-looking
man, he repelled me exceedingly: there was no power in that
smooth-skinned face of a full oval shape: no firmness in that
aquiline nose and small cherry mouth; there was no thought on the
low, even forehead; no command in that blank, brown eye.</p>
<p>As I sat in my usual nook, and looked at him with the light of
the girandoles on the mantelpiece beaming full over him—for
he occupied an arm-chair drawn close to the fire, and kept
shrinking still nearer, as if he were cold, I compared him with
Mr. Rochester. I think (with deference be it spoken) the
contrast could not be much greater between a sleek gander and a
fierce falcon: between a meek sheep and the rough-coated
keen-eyed dog, its guardian.</p>
<p>He had spoken of Mr. Rochester as an old friend. A
curious friendship theirs must have been: a pointed illustration,
indeed, of the old adage that “extremes meet.”</p>
<p>Two or three of the gentlemen sat near him, and I caught at
times scraps of their conversation across the room. At
first I could not make much sense of what I heard; for the
discourse of Louisa Eshton and Mary Ingram, who sat nearer to me,
confused the fragmentary sentences that reached me at
intervals. These last were discussing the stranger; they
both called him “a beautiful man.” Louisa said
he was “a love of a creature,” and she “adored
him;” and Mary instanced his “pretty little mouth,
and nice nose,” as her ideal of the charming.</p>
<p>“And what a sweet-tempered forehead he has!” cried
Louisa,—“so smooth—none of those frowning
irregularities I dislike so much; and such a placid eye and
smile!”</p>
<p>And then, to my great relief, Mr. Henry Lynn summoned them to
the other side of the room, to settle some point about the
deferred excursion to Hay Common.</p>
<p>I was now able to concentrate my attention on the group by the
fire, and I presently gathered that the new-comer was called Mr.
Mason; then I learned that he was but just arrived in England,
and that he came from some hot country: which was the reason,
doubtless, his face was so sallow, and that he sat so near the
hearth, and wore a surtout in the house. Presently the
words Jamaica, Kingston, Spanish Town, indicated the West Indies
as his residence; and it was with no little surprise I gathered,
ere long, that he had there first seen and become acquainted with
Mr. Rochester. He spoke of his friend’s dislike of
the burning heats, the hurricanes, and rainy seasons of that
region. I knew Mr. Rochester had been a traveller: Mrs.
Fairfax had said so; but I thought the continent of Europe had
bounded his wanderings; till now I had never heard a hint given
of visits to more distant shores.</p>
<p>I was pondering these things, when an incident, and a somewhat
unexpected one, broke the thread of my musings. Mr. Mason,
shivering as some one chanced to open the door, asked for more
coal to be put on the fire, which had burnt out its flame, though
its mass of cinder still shone hot and red. The footman who
brought the coal, in going out, stopped near Mr. Eshton’s
chair, and said something to him in a low voice, of which I heard
only the words, “old woman,”—“quite
troublesome.”</p>
<p>“Tell her she shall be put in the stocks if she does not
take herself off,” replied the magistrate.</p>
<p>“No—stop!” interrupted Colonel Dent.
“Don’t send her away, Eshton; we might turn the thing
to account; better consult the ladies.” And speaking
aloud, he continued—“Ladies, you talked of going to
Hay Common to visit the gipsy camp; Sam here says that one of the
old Mother Bunches is in the servants’ hall at this moment,
and insists upon being brought in before ‘the
quality,’ to tell them their fortunes. Would you like
to see her?”</p>
<p>“Surely, colonel,” cried Lady Ingram, “you
would not encourage such a low impostor? Dismiss her, by
all means, at once!”</p>
<p>“But I cannot persuade her to go away, my lady,”
said the footman; “nor can any of the servants: Mrs.
Fairfax is with her just now, entreating her to be gone; but she
has taken a chair in the chimney-corner, and says nothing shall
stir her from it till she gets leave to come in here.”</p>
<p>“What does she want?” asked Mrs. Eshton.</p>
<p>“‘To tell the gentry their fortunes,’ she
says, ma’am; and she swears she must and will do
it.”</p>
<p>“What is she like?” inquired the Misses Eshton, in
a breath.</p>
<p>“A shockingly ugly old creature, miss; almost as black
as a crock.”</p>
<p>“Why, she’s a real sorceress!” cried
Frederick Lynn. “Let us have her in, of
course.”</p>
<p>“To be sure,” rejoined his brother; “it
would be a thousand pities to throw away such a chance of
fun.”</p>
<p>“My dear boys, what are you thinking about?”
exclaimed Mrs. Lynn.</p>
<p>“I cannot possibly countenance any such inconsistent
proceeding,” chimed in the Dowager Ingram.</p>
<p>“Indeed, mama, but you can—and will,”
pronounced the haughty voice of Blanche, as she turned round on
the piano-stool; where till now she had sat silent, apparently
examining sundry sheets of music. “I have a curiosity
to hear my fortune told: therefore, Sam, order the beldame
forward.”</p>
<p>“My darling Blanche! recollect—”</p>
<p>“I do—I recollect all you can suggest; and I must
have my will—quick, Sam!”</p>
<p>“Yes—yes—yes!” cried all the
juveniles, both ladies and gentlemen. “Let her
come—it will be excellent sport!”</p>
<p>The footman still lingered. “She looks such a
rough one,” said he.</p>
<p>“Go!” ejaculated Miss Ingram, and the man
went.</p>
<p>Excitement instantly seized the whole party: a running fire of
raillery and jests was proceeding when Sam returned.</p>
<p>“She won’t come now,” said he.
“She says it’s not her mission to appear before the
‘vulgar herd’ (them’s her words). I must
show her into a room by herself, and then those who wish to
consult her must go to her one by one.”</p>
<p>“You see now, my queenly Blanche,” began Lady
Ingram, “she encroaches. Be advised, my angel
girl—and—”</p>
<p>“Show her into the library, of course,” cut in the
“angel girl.” “It is not my mission to
listen to her before the vulgar herd either: I mean to have her
all to myself. Is there a fire in the library?”</p>
<p>“Yes, ma’am—but she looks such a
tinkler.”</p>
<p>“Cease that chatter, blockhead! and do my
bidding.”</p>
<p>Again Sam vanished; and mystery, animation, expectation rose
to full flow once more.</p>
<p>“She’s ready now,” said the footman, as he
reappeared. “She wishes to know who will be her first
visitor.”</p>
<p>“I think I had better just look in upon her before any
of the ladies go,” said Colonel Dent.</p>
<p>“Tell her, Sam, a gentleman is coming.”</p>
<p>Sam went and returned.</p>
<p>“She says, sir, that she’ll have no gentlemen;
they need not trouble themselves to come near her; nor,” he
added, with difficulty suppressing a titter, “any ladies
either, except the young, and single.”</p>
<p>“By Jove, she has taste!” exclaimed Henry
Lynn.</p>
<p>Miss Ingram rose solemnly: “I go first,” she said,
in a tone which might have befitted the leader of a forlorn hope,
mounting a breach in the van of his men.</p>
<p>“Oh, my best! oh, my dearest!
pause—reflect!” was her mama’s cry; but she
swept past her in stately silence, passed through the door which
Colonel Dent held open, and we heard her enter the library.</p>
<p>A comparative silence ensued. Lady Ingram thought it
“le cas” to wring her hands: which she did
accordingly. Miss Mary declared she felt, for her part, she
never dared venture. Amy and Louisa Eshton tittered under
their breath, and looked a little frightened.</p>
<p>The minutes passed very slowly: fifteen were counted before
the library-door again opened. Miss Ingram returned to us
through the arch.</p>
<p>Would she laugh? Would she take it as a joke? All
eyes met her with a glance of eager curiosity, and she met all
eyes with one of rebuff and coldness; she looked neither flurried
nor merry: she walked stiffly to her seat, and took it in
silence.</p>
<p>“Well, Blanche?” said Lord Ingram.</p>
<p>“What did she say, sister?” asked Mary.</p>
<p>“What did you think? How do you feel?—Is she
a real fortune-teller?” demanded the Misses Eshton.</p>
<p>“Now, now, good people,” returned Miss Ingram,
“don’t press upon me. Really your organs of
wonder and credulity are easily excited: you seem, by the
importance of you all—my good mama included—ascribe
to this matter, absolutely to believe we have a genuine witch in
the house, who is in close alliance with the old gentleman.
I have seen a gipsy vagabond; she has practised in hackneyed
fashion the science of palmistry and told me what such people
usually tell. My whim is gratified; and now I think Mr.
Eshton will do well to put the hag in the stocks to-morrow
morning, as he threatened.”</p>
<p>Miss Ingram took a book, leant back in her chair, and so
declined further conversation. I watched her for nearly
half-an-hour: during all that time she never turned a page, and
her face grew momently darker, more dissatisfied, and more sourly
expressive of disappointment. She had obviously not heard
anything to her advantage: and it seemed to me, from her
prolonged fit of gloom and taciturnity, that she herself,
notwithstanding her professed indifference, attached undue
importance to whatever revelations had been made her.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<SPAN href="images/p184b.jpg">
<ANTIMG alt="During all that time she never turned a page" src="images/p184s.jpg" /></SPAN></p>
<p>Meantime, Mary Ingram, Amy and Louisa Eshton, declared they
dared not go alone; and yet they all wished to go. A
negotiation was opened through the medium of the ambassador, Sam;
and after much pacing to and fro, till, I think, the said
Sam’s calves must have ached with the exercise, permission
was at last, with great difficulty, extorted from the rigorous
Sibyl, for the three to wait upon her in a body.</p>
<p>Their visit was not so still as Miss Ingram’s had been:
we heard hysterical giggling and little shrieks proceeding from
the library; and at the end of about twenty minutes they burst
the door open, and came running across the hall, as if they were
half-scared out of their wits.</p>
<p>“I am sure she is something not right!” they
cried, one and all. “She told us such things!
She knows all about us!” and they sank breathless into the
various seats the gentlemen hastened to bring them.</p>
<p>Pressed for further explanation, they declared she had told
them of things they had said and done when they were mere
children; described books and ornaments they had in their
boudoirs at home: keepsakes that different relations had
presented to them. They affirmed that she had even divined
their thoughts, and had whispered in the ear of each the name of
the person she liked best in the world, and informed them of what
they most wished for.</p>
<p>Here the gentlemen interposed with earnest petitions to be
further enlightened on these two last-named points; but they got
only blushes, ejaculations, tremors, and titters, in return for
their importunity. The matrons, meantime, offered
vinaigrettes and wielded fans; and again and again reiterated the
expression of their concern that their warning had not been taken
in time; and the elder gentlemen laughed, and the younger urged
their services on the agitated fair ones.</p>
<p>In the midst of the tumult, and while my eyes and ears were
fully engaged in the scene before me, I heard a hem close at my
elbow: I turned, and saw Sam.</p>
<p>“If you please, miss, the gipsy declares that there is
another young single lady in the room who has not been to her
yet, and she swears she will not go till she has seen all.
I thought it must be you: there is no one else for it. What
shall I tell her?”</p>
<p>“Oh, I will go by all means,” I answered: and I
was glad of the unexpected opportunity to gratify my much-excited
curiosity. I slipped out of the room, unobserved by any
eye—for the company were gathered in one mass about the
trembling trio just returned—and I closed the door quietly
behind me.</p>
<p>“If you like, miss,” said Sam, “I’ll
wait in the hall for you; and if she frightens you, just call and
I’ll come in.”</p>
<p>“No, Sam, return to the kitchen: I am not in the least
afraid.” Nor was I; but I was a good deal interested
and excited.</p>
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