It was not right of Barbara to get so angry, and answer
lady Ann so petulantly, for she knew her pretty well
by this time, and yet was often her guest. That
it was impossible for such a girl to feel respect for
such a woman, if it accounts for her bearing to her,
condemns the familiarity that gave occasion to that
bearing. At the same time, but for lady Ann’s
superiority in age, Barbara would have spoken her mind
with yet greater freedom. Her rank made no halo
about her in Barbara’s eyes.
Lady Ann took no more trouble to appease her:
the foolish girl would, she judged, be ashamed of
herself soon, and accept the favour she knew to be
undeserved! Lady Ann understood Barbara no more
than lady Ann understood the real woman underlying
lady Ann. She was not afraid of losing Barbara,
for she believed her parents could not but be strongly
in favour of an alliance with her family. She
knew nothing of the personal opposition between Mr.
and Mrs. Wylder: she never opposed sir Wilton
except it was worth her while to do so; and sir Wilton
never opposed her at all—openly. It
gave lady Ann no more pleasure to go against her husband,
than to comply with his wishes; and she had anything
but an adequate notion of the pleasure it gave sir
Wilton to see any desire of hers frustrated.
Barbara went to the stable, where man and boy had
always his service in his right hand ready for her—got
Miss Brown saddled, and was away from Mortgrange before
Richard, early as he had begun, was half-way through
his morning’s work.
She went to see Alice almost every day from that afternoon;
and as no one could resist Barbara, Alice’s
reserve, buttressed and bastioned as it was with pain,
soon began to yield before the live sympathy that assailed
it. They became fast friends.
CHAPTER XXIX.
ALICE AND BARBARA.
It was weeks before Alice was able to leave her bed:
she had been utterly exhausted.
On a lovely summer morning she woke to a sense of
returning health. She had been lying like a waste
shore, at low spring-tide, covered with dry seaweeds,
withered jelly-fishes, and a multitudinous life that
gasped for the ocean: at last, at last, the cool,
washing throb of the great sea of bliss, whose fountain
is the heart of God, had stolen upon her consciousness,
and she knew that she lived. She lay in a neat
little curtained bed, in a room with a sloping roof
on both sides, covered, not with tiles or slates,
but with warm thatch, thick and sound. Ivy was
creeping through the chinks of the ill-fitting window-frame;
but through the little dormer window itself the sun
shone freely, and made shadows of shivering ivy-leaves
upon the deal floor. It was a very humble room,
and Alice had been used to much better furniture—but
neither to room nor furniture so clean. There
was a wholesomeness and purity everywhere about her,
very welcome to the lady-eyes with which Alice was
Copyrights
There & Back from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
