Sophia: A Romance

"Well," he answered, "I did not know, my dear. Young housekeepers-"

"Why did you think I should discharge her?" she cried, interrupting him sharply; and then, "Pray forgive me," she continued hurriedly, yet stiffly, "I-you hurt me a little in what you said of-the tenants. I only ask you to believe that I am as incapable of dismissing an old servant for a trifle as you are of behaving unjustly to your tenants!"

He did not appear to notice her emotion.

"Thank you," he said. "Then we understand one another. Of course, I don't wish you to feel this an obligation. Mrs. Stokes is growing old-"

"It is no obligation," she said coldly. And then, "I think it will be more pleasant on the terrace," she continued; and she moved towards the door.

He held it open that she might pass through; and he followed her into the hall. He little dreamt that, as she walked before him, she was wondering, almost with terror, whether he would go out with her or leave her; whether this was all she was to see of him, day by day. The doubt was not solved; for they were interrupted. As they entered the shady hall by one door Lady Betty darted into it from the terrace, her face scarlet, her hat crushed, her eyes sparkling with rage. They were so near her she could not escape them; nor could she hide her disorder. "Why, Betty," Sophia cried in astonishment, "what is it? What in the world is the matter?"

"Don't ask me," Betty cried, almost weeping. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself. You-your brother has insulted me! He has held me and kissed me against my will! And he laughed at me! He laughed at me! Oh, I could kill him!"

CHAPTER XXIV

WHO PLAYS, PAYS

It must be confessed that the flicker of skirts with which Lady Betty ran down the steps when she started for her airing, still more a certain toss of the head that was its perfect complement, gave her mischievous soul huge delight; for she had watched a French maid, and knew them to be pure nature, and the very quintessence of the singing chambermaid's art. It was not impossible that as she executed them she had a person in her eye and meant him to profit by them; for by-and-by she repeated the performance at a point where two paths diverged, and where it put the fitting close to a very pretty pause of indecision. Tom was so hard on her heels that ordinary ears must have detected his tread; but that my lady heard nothing was proved by the fact that she chose the more retired track and tripped along it, humming and darting from flower to flower like some dainty insect let loose among the bracken.

She plucked at will, and buried her shapely little nose in the blossoms; she went on, she stopped, she went on again, and Tom let her go; until the path, after winding round a low spreading oak that closed the view from the house, began to descend into a sunny dell where it ran, a green ribbon of sward, through waist-high fern, leapt the brook by a single plank, and scaled the steeper side by tiny zig-zags.

On the hither side of this summer hollow, sleepy with the warm hum of bees and scent of thyme, Tom overtook her, and never sure was any one so surprised and overwhelmed as this poor maid.

"La, sir, I declare you frightened my heart into my mouth," she cried, pressing a white hand to her bodice and looking timidly at him from the shelter of her straw hat. "I'm sure I beg your pardon, sir," with a curtsey. "I would not have come here, if I'd known, for the world."

"No, child?"

"No, sir, indeed I would not!"

"And why not?" Tom asked pertinently. "Why should you not come here?"

"Why?" she retorted, properly scandalised. "What! Come where the family walk? I should hope I know my place better than that, sir. And to behave myself in it."

"Very prettily, I am sure," Tom declared, with a bold stare of admiration.

"As becomes me, sir, I hope," Betty answered demurely, and to show that the stare had no effect upon her, primly turned her head away.

"Though you were brought up with your mistress? Or was it with your late mistress?" Tom asked slily. "Or have you forgotten which it was, Betty?"

"I hope I've never forgotten any one who was kind to me," she whispered, her head drooping so that he could not see her face. "There's not many think of a poor girl in service; though I come of some that ha' seen better days."

"Indeed, Betty. Is that so?"

"So I've heard, sir."

"Well, will you count me among your friends, Betty?"

"La, no, sir!" with vivacity, and she shot him with an arch glance. "I should think not indeed! I should like to know why, sir?" and she tossed her head disdainfully. "But there, I've talked too long. I'm sure her ladyship would not like it, and asking your pardon, sir, I'll go on."

"But I'm coming your way."

"No, sir."

"But I am," Tom persisted. "Why shouldn't I? You are not afraid of me, child? You were not afraid of me in the dark on the hill, when we sat on the tree together, and you wore my coat."

Betty sighed. "'Twas different then, sir," she murmured, hanging her head, and tracing a pattern on the sward with the point of her toe.

"Why?"

"I'd no choice, sir."

"Then you would choose to leave me, would you?"

"And I didn't know that you belonged to the family," she continued, evading the question, "or I should not have made so free, sir. And besides, asking your pardon, you told me that you had seen enough of women to last you your life, sir. You know you did."

"Oh, d-n!" Tom cried. The reminder was not welcome.

Betty recoiled virtuously. "There, sir," she cried, "now I know what you think of me! If I were a lady, you'd not have said that to me, I'll be bound. Swearing, indeed? For shame, sir! But I'm for home, and none too soon!"

"No, no!" Tom cried. "Don't be silly!"

"It's yes, yes, sir, by your leave," she retorted. "I'm none such a fool as you'd make me. That shows me what you think of me."

And turning with an offended air, she began to retrace her steps. Tom called to her, but fruitlessly. She did not answer nor pause. He had to follow her, feeling small and smaller. A little farther, and they would be again within sight of the house.

The track was narrow, the fern on each side grew waist high; he could not intercept her without actual violence. At length, "See here, child," he said humbly, "if you'll turn and chat a bit, I'll persuade you it was not meant. I'll treat you every bit as if you were a lady. I swear I will!"

"I don't know," she cried. "I don't know that I can trust you." But she went more slowly.

"'Pon honour I will," he protested. "I swear I will!"

She stopped at that, and turned to him. "You will?" she said doubtfully. "You really will? Then will you please-" with a charming shyness, "pick me a nosegay to put in my tucker, as my lady's beaux used to do? I should like to feel like a lady for once," she continued eagerly. "'Twould be such a frolic as you gentlefolk have, sir, when you pretend to be poor milk-maids and make syllabub, and will not have a bandbox or a hoop-petticoat near you!"

"Your ladyship shall have a nosegay," Tom answered gaily. "But I must first see the colour of your eyes that I may match them."

She clapped her hands in a rapture. "Oh, how you act, to be sure!" she cried. "'Tis too charming. And for my eyes, sir, it's no more than matching wools." And she looked at him shyly, dropping a curtsey the while.

"Oh, isn't it?" he retorted. "Matching wools indeed. Wool does not change, nor shift its hues. Nor glance, nor sparkle, nor ripple like water running now on the deeps, now on the shallows. Nor mirror the clouds, nor dance like wheat in the sunshine. Nor melt like summer," he continued rapidly, "nor freeze like the Arctic. Nor say a thousand things in a thousand seconds."

"La! And do my eyes do all that?" Betty cried, opening them very wide in her innocent astonishment. "What a thing it is, to be sure, to be a lady. I declare, sir, you are quite out of breath with the fine things you've said. All the same they are blue in the main, and I'll have forget-me-nots, if you please, sir. There's plenty in the brook, and while your honour fetches them I'll sit here and do nothing, like the gentlefolks."

The brook ran a hundred paces below them, and the sun was hot in the dell, but Tom had no fair excuse. He ran down with a good grace, and in five minutes was back again, his hands full of tiny blossoms.

"They're like a bit of the sky," said Betty, as he pinned them in her bodice.

"Then they are like your eyes, sweet," he answered, and he stooped to pay himself for the compliment with a kiss.

But Betty slipped from him without betraying, save by a sudden blush, that she understood.