“If you see all this,” said Lady Caroline,
mollified, “our business should be easier, with
a little common sense on your part.”
“And it knits you,” pursued Ruth, “into
a sort of family conspiracy— the womenkind
especially—like bees in a hive. The
head of the family is the queen bee, and you respect
him amazingly; but all the same you keep your own
judgment, and know when to thwart and when to disobey
him, for his own and the family’s good.
I think you disobeyed Sir Oliver in coming here;
or, at least, deceived him and came here without his
knowledge.”
“I am not accustomed,” said Lady Caroline,
rising, “to direct my conduct upon my nephew’s
advice.”
“That, more or less, is what I was trying to
say. Dear madam, let me warn you to do so, if
you would manage his private affairs.”
They faced each other now, upon declared war.
Lady Caroline’s neck was suffused to a purplish
red behind the ears. She gasped for speech.
Before she found it there came a tapping on the door,
and Diana Vyell entered.
DIANA VYELL.
“Have you not finished yet?” Miss Diana
closed the door, glanced from one to the other, and
laughed with a genial brutality. “Well,
it’s time I came. Dear mamma, you seem
to be getting your feathers pulled.”
There was a byword among the Whig families at home
(who, by intermarrying, had learned to gauge another’s
weaknesses), that “the Pett medal showed ill
in reverse.” Miss Diana had heard the
saying. As a Vyell—the Vyells were,
before all things, critical—she knew it
to be just, as well as malicious; but as a dutiful
daughter she ought to have remembered.
As it was, her cool comment stung her mother to fury.
The poor lady pointed a finger at Ruth, and spluttered
(there is no more elegant word for the very inelegant
exhibition),—
“A strumpet! One that has been whipped
through the public streets.”
There was a dreadful pause. Miss Diana, the
first to recover herself, stepped back to the door
and held it open.
“You must excuse dear mamma,” she said
coolly. “She has overtired herself.”
But Lady Caroline continued to point a finger trembling
with passion.
“Her price!” she shrilled. “Ask
her that. It is all these creatures ever understand!”
Miss Diana slipped an arm beneath her elbow and firmly
conducted her forth. Ruth, hearing the door
shut, supposed that both women had withdrawn.
She sank into a chair, and was stretching out her
arms over the table to bury her face in them and sob,
when the voice of the younger said quietly behind
her shoulder,—
“It is always hard, after mamma’s tantrums,
to bring the talk back to a decent level. Nevertheless,
shall we try?”
Ruth had drawn herself up again, rallying the spirit
in her. It was weary, bruised; but its hour
of default was not yet. Her voice dragged, but
just perceptibly, as she answered Miss Vyell, who nodded,
noting her courage and wondering a little,—
