Lady Bell, Volume 1 by Sarah Tytler

Mrs. Die was a tall, gaunt, scarecrow of a woman, with wild black eyes / which looked immense in size, and gleamed like coals of fire in their / hollow sockets. Her face, which in youth had been handsome-the Godwins / had been a handsome family-was become the typical face of Queen / Elizabeth,-of an old Jewess,-or of a witch before her time. Her dress / was an open gown and petticoat of Indian cotton, the pattern / representing huge birds of every hue. Her grizzled hair was drawn / tightly back from her dark bony face, and rolled over its cushions / behind and before, while it was crowned by such an out-of-date fly cap / as Lady Bell had never seen.

"Good heavens! Mrs. Die, what are you doing here at this time of the / day? " demanded Mrs. Kitty, with a directness and energy which, while / Lady Bell could not explain the tone, served as a slight salve to her / own sore pride,-"you'll have the spasms or a swoon before you are an / hour older."

"Never mind, Kitty," declared Mrs. Die in a high harsh key, "I've / business before me to-day. So this is Bell Etheredge," she broke off / abruptly, and, as if it were only at that moment that she remembered and / observed her niece,-"never mind paying your duty to me, child," as Lady / Bell was venturing to approach her. "What a shabby little body it is, / and how we've fallen off for certain! " she said in a loud voice, aside / to Mrs. Kitty, and then she went on, turning to Lady Bell again, while / Mrs. Die stood like a man with her feet apart, and her back to the fire, / toasting her hands held behind her to the warmth. "What do you think / that we're to make of you, girl, eh? Do you know that you've come to a / ruined house? St. Bevis's has stood half built for five-and-thirty / years, since my father's time; it will never be finished now, but will / serve as a monument of pride and vanity, drinking and dicing. My / brother, your uncle, owes fifty thousand pounds of gambling debts, which / only lie over because you can take no more than the skin from the cat, / and so long as the cat lives, he may win a race, or a match with the / cocks, or a game of hazard occasionally, to pay off an instalment of his / debt and his servants' wages. That's how we live; but there were four / executions in the house last year, which have stripped us pretty bare, / as even your baby eyes may tell you. We are more utterly at the dogs / than your father the earl was, and he left you a beggar."

"I wish I had never come to beg from you, Aunt Die," protested Lady / Bell, unable to restrain a sob, while she covered her face with her / trembling hands and shrank back and down as if she had received a blow. / The instinctive cry and action softened her fierce examiner a little.

"It is better you should learn the worst at once, Bell Etheredge," Mrs. / Die continued more gently; "I did not say that you could help it; I / think none of us can help anything in our miserable lives. What are you / to make of yourself here?"

"I'll not be in your way," asserted Lady Bell in her youthful / desperation. "I'll not eat grudged bits, which you do not have to give. / I did not know that Uncle Godwin was ruined, or that you would hate the / sight of me. I'll go elsewhere. Oh! why did you let the chaise go back / without me?"

"What a prodigious fool you are, sure," exclaimed Mrs. Die / contemptuously, "as if I had hate to spare for a child like you,-I have / more to do with my hate; and where would you run to? Don't you know / since the old dragon, Lady Lucie, who might have found you an / establishment if she had really had the liking which she professed for / you -- "

"Lady Lucie was my dearest, best friend," interrupted Lady Bell / passionately.

"Who has died and done nothing for you, any more than for her pug, if / she had one," went on Mrs. Die in cool derision; "so that we are all in / the same boat, whether we like it or not, and must sink or swim / together. There, girl, go work at your ruffles, or some other of your / fiddle-faddle acquirements, to pass the time till some change offer. You / are young yet; perhaps a change will come to you. As for me, I am sick / of the discussion. I have more in my head. Kitty, he was seen again last / night-you need not deny it. " She turned to Mrs. Kitty with an appeal / which was almost a threat.

Mrs. Kitty, however surprised by Mrs. Die's unusual appearance, was / improving the time in washing up the breakfast china, having brought out / from a cupboard a little hand-tub for the purpose. The prosaic / proceeding was oddly at variance with all that was extraordinary and / violent in Mrs. Die's looks and conversation.

"I warrant he's staying at the Cross Whips," admitted Mrs. Kitty, with / evident unwillingness; "but he may be there without seeking to get at / you."

"That's a credible story, seeing what St. Bevis's did for him, as if / hell on earth could attract a man. " Mrs. Die rejected the suggestion, / her great eyes blazing with fire and scorn. "I tell you what, Kitty, I'm / going to ride over to the quarter sessions again, to show him up, and to / force that hypocrite of a cousin of his, who could not save his own / kinsman, and don't care that I am left to suffer from his base / degradation, to bind over Cholmondely to keep the peace, and to cease to / persecute me," she ended, with a terrible intensity of aversion and / disgust in her calmness.

"Inform the Squire-take counsel with him," advised Mrs. Kitty / doubtfully.

"Never! " screamed Mrs. Die, clapping her hands together. "What! to be / twitted by him with the past? to be reminded that he did it? that a fine / Lon'on gentleman like my brother is a fiend incarnate compared to a poor / sold and sunk sot? I'll take it into my own hands. I'll ride over to the / quarter sessions this very day, and what's more, I'll carry this midge / of a niece, Bell Etheredge, with me, to give her a little lesson in men / and manners."