Lady Bell, Volume 1 by Sarah Tytler

The family did not meet at dinner, the only meal at which they professed / to gather, the day after Lady Bell came to St. Bevis's. But on the / following day she had again an opportunity of seeing her uncle. She was / summoned into the dining-room, where she had seen him on the evening of / her arrival, in order to sit down to table with the rest.

The Squire, standing near the foot of the table, made her a little / mocking bow. "May I flatter myself country air does not -- " he left the / sentence unfinished, as if he had forgotten her existence before he / could conclude his speech. He began carving the meat in the middle of / Mr. Greenwood's saying grace. "The odds are upon Skyflyer," he observed / presently in a low tone to the chaplain, and a little later in the meal / he made an investigation of the same authority with regard to a certain / horse-ball. He spoke to no one else, neither did Mrs. Die directly / address her brother, though she kept growling audibly at him from her / end of the table, like a dog that will give tongue and show its teeth, / though it knows that the protest will pass unheeded, nay, that perhaps / the protester will have punishment dealt to it for its pains.

"Nothing but mutton and fowls, Kitty," exclaimed Mrs. Die; "we'll be at / the boards themselves soon. No, I know that you can't help it. Burgundy? / Don't we wash our hands in Burgundy, it goes so fast, Sneyd? Short of / wet and dry fruits for kickshaws, and no more to be had from Cleveburgh / till we've cleared our scores; that will be long enough, not till after / our tricks with stable-boys and gambling-house keepers beat cleverer / knaves' tricks."

That dinner was a fair sample of following dinners.

Lady Bell lived on at St. Bevis's. She had no other resource, and found / that her fate, piteous as it was, did not prove so unbearable as she had / feared. It is the experience of most of us, particularly at the plastic / age of fourteen.

The Squire, who had spent the greater part of his youth in London, / though he had deserted the town or found it too hot for him, was hardly / ever at home: Newmarket, Epsom, Ascot, races of local celebrity, local / gaming clubs, and card matches, pretty much divided his time. On the / occasions when he was at home, his treatment of Lady Bell was to ignore / her presence.

If a sister of Mr. Godwin's had happened to marry a spendthrift / nobleman, and husband and wife had died, leaving a puny, vapid girl, it / was no fault of his, and he was not called upon to cumber himself with / considerations regarding her welfare.

Squire Godwin succeeded in impressing Lady Bell more deeply than all the / fine gentlemen whom she had seen at her grand-aunt's, and in striking / her with awe; but she could not complain greatly of his overlooking her, / since she, poor child, felt tempted to shrink out of his sight.

Mrs. Die was a woman half crazy with wrongs, utterly wanting in / principle and self-restraint, and using strong stimulants; but, as she / had said of her hate, she had too much to do brooding over her fate and / fighting with her enemies, to trouble herself by tormenting Lady Bell.

Mrs. Die let the girl alone for the most part, unless when her youth and / opening prospects, unblighted, however slender, pierced her aunt with / the sting of recollection. Even then Mrs. Die would content herself with / a passing taunt at the girl's girlishness, untold fortunes, and imagined / inspirations, and forget all about her the next moment.

Mrs. Kitty's smaller nature and comparative leisure from introspection / and desperate schemes, left her more at liberty to cherish a grudge and / a jealousy, and to visit them continually, like the dropping of water, / on the head of a hapless, defenceless victim.

But Mrs. Kitty, too, had an engrossing interest and occupation, which / was not snubbing Lady Bell. Mrs. Kitty had room in her narrow heart for / a slavish devotion, the more ardent that it flowed in a single confined / channel, and that devotion was at once lavished and concentrated on Mrs. / Die.

In the old days, when Mrs. Die had been a brilliant, ill-regulated, / reckless girl, she had taken by storm the heart of the ungifted, branded / dependant-reared and retained at St. Bevis's in the spirit of a coarse / tolerance-by the heedless generosity which had overleaped the gulf / between the girls, and had raised Mrs. Kitty to a convenient place in / Mrs. Die's confidence and regard.

Mrs. Kitty's hands were full not only with grasping tightly such reins / of domestic government as were left at St. Bevis's, but with protecting / Mrs. Die from herself and her neighbours, and cherishing the lost woman / so far as she would suffer herself to be cherished.

Notwithstanding, there were pullings down in her airs for Lady Bell, / which, as she grew accustomed to the process, did not hurt the girl / much, only put her on her mettle and provoked her to undesirable / pertness.

There were little deprivations in what comforts and luxuries of soft / pillows, hot water, apples, nuts, prunes, were going at St. Bevis's-a / piece of petty malice which might cause Lady Bell's young bones, blood, / and appetite to crave and cry out, and her sense of fairness and honour / to smart, but which did not press hardly on a healthy girl already / trained to some measure of self-denial, as such girls were commonly / trained. What was worse, there was the sedulous, suspicious guarding of / Lady Bell from ever coming near Mrs. Die in any moment of weakness or / kindred kindness on Mrs. Die's part. Mrs. Kitty took care that there / should not be the most distant danger of Lady Bell's stepping between / them, and ousting Mrs. Kitty from the place which she prized so highly, / that she fancied the whole world must prize it too, as the recipient of / Mrs. Die's unhappy secrets. But Lady Bell did not covet the post which / was thus denied her.