“Shame or cruelty had driven her from it,”
said Malcolm, “and there she was.”
“Do you mean you saw her yourself wandering
about?” asked Clementina.
“Twenty times, my lady.”
Clementina was silent.
“Well, what comes next?” said Florimel.
“Next comes a young gentleman;—but
this is a picture in another frame, although of the
same night;—a young gentleman in evening
dress, sipping his madeira, warm and comfortable, in
the bland temper that should follow the best of dinners,
his face beaming with satisfaction after some boast
concerning himself, or with silent success in the
concoction of one or two compliments to have at hand
when he joins the ladies in the drawing room.”
“Nobody can help such differences,” said
Florimel. “If there were nobody rich, who
would there be to do anything for the poor? It’s
not the young gentleman’s fault that he is better
born and has more money than the poor girl.”
“No,” said Malcolm; “but what if
the poor girl has the young gentleman’s child
to carry about from morning to night.”
“Oh, well! I suppose she’s paid for
it,” said Florimel, whose innocence must surely
have been supplemented by some stupidity, born of
her flippancy.
“Do be quiet, Florimel,” said Clementina.
“You don’t know what you are talking about.”
Her face was in a glow, and one glance at it set Florimel’s
in a flame. She rose without a word, but with
a look of mingled confusion and offence, and walked
away. Clementina gathered her work together.
But ere she followed her, she turned to Malcolm, looked
him calmly in the face, and said,
“No one can blame you for hating such a man.”
“Indeed, my lady, but some one would—the
only one for whose praise or blame we ought to care
more than a straw or two. He tells us we are
neither to judge nor to hate. But—”
“I cannot stay and talk with you,” said
Clementina. “You must pardon me if I follow
your mistress.”
Another moment and he would have told her all, in
the hope of her warning Florimel. But she was
gone.
Florimel was offended with Malcolm: he had put
her confidence in him to shame, speaking of things
to which he ought not once to have even alluded.
But Clementina was not only older than Florimel, but
in her loving endeavours for her kind, had heard many
a pitiful story, and was now saddened by the tale,
not shocked at the teller. Indeed, Malcolm’s
mode of acquainting her with the grounds of the feeling
she had challenged pleased both her heart and her sense
of what was becoming; while, as a partisan of women,
finding a man also of their part, she was ready to
offer him the gratitude of all womankind—in
her one typical self.
“What a rough diamond is here!” she thought.
