Lady Bell, Volume 1 by Sarah Tytler

Church was nearly the only place where Lady Bell saw the world, if / seeing the world it could be called, when she was shut securely into a / high moth-eaten brown pew, with Squire Trevor seated by her side, and / his servants ranged in rows behind her. However, Lady Bell's wandering / eyes contrived to peep over the board, to seek out and rest on a lady / and gentleman in the only other pew which was on an equality with Squire / Trevor's, in the little parish church.

The lady was only a few years older than Lady Bell, who thought the / stranger very handsome. She had one of those striking profiles which / readily catch the eye. Her face was long and oval, with clearly cut, / distinguished nose and chin, the under part of the face projecting very / slightly. The fine face belonged to a fine figure. The white cardinal / cape and little chip hat and plume of feathers had more of an air of / fashion than Lady Bell had noticed in such articles since her happy days / with the best society at Lady Lucie Penruddock's.

The lady's companion was young like herself, as Lady Bell remarked / wistfully, though after the fashion of most of the young Englishmen of / rank whom she had seen, his face lacked the freshness of youth. Still it / was a pleasant prepossessing face in its suspicion of haggardness and / exhaustion, and was in conjunction with a good person and the easy / manner of a cultivated man of the world.

The couple used the same Prayer-Book,-that is, he looked on hers when he / used a book at all. She admonished him with a reproachful smile and / shake of the head, when he yawned and closed his eyes during the / service. He led her out of church when the congregation were dismissed, / and handing her into a landau, drove off talking and laughing with her. / They were a very pretty couple, surely near and intimate relations, and / they quite took Lady Bell's fancy.

"Who are the handsome lady and gentleman? " she inquired on the first / opportunity of the vicar's wife.

"I am sure I cannot tell," answered the lady indifferently; "I desire to / keep my eyes better employed than in staring round at the skin-deep / beauty or fine feathers of my fellow-worms. I dare say you mean young / Sundon, of Chevely, who has taken a wife like the rest of us, and / brought her down on a visit to these parts. They say he has been a wild / liver, and that the friends of madam, who was a great fortune, opposed / the marriage. If so, they did not need to wish her ill, in order to keep / her from thriving."

"She looks more like thriving than I who obeyed my friends," thought / Lady Bell.

"Madam Sundon will want all her wits," continued the speaker, "to make / her man pick up, that he may not squander what is left of his means and / her fortune. But I neither know nor care, for it is long since I have / shaken hands with the world and its gossip."

"Young Sundon, of Chevely," echoed Squire Trevor irritably, "the spark / who stood up against his betters at Peasmarsh? I forbid you, Lady Bell, / to have a word to say to any one of the pack."

"Who speaks of having a word to say? "-she resented the prohibition / nevertheless; "mayn't a cat look at a king? " And Lady Bell did take a / poor consolation in looking her fill at the comely, lighthearted young / couple. In return the couple looked hard at Lady Bell, and, as she / convinced herself with a swelling heart, repressed a smile at her / associations, and pitied her.

At last, meeting the Sundons, when she had broken away from Mr. Trevor, / and was riding with the vicar's daughter or with a servant, the / beautiful, assured-looking lady made an advance to Lady Bell. Mrs. / Sundon's was one of those faces which are full of character and latent / strength. This was more true with regard to her face than to that of her / bland but languid companion. Therefore she took the initiative, smiled / in a friendly way, and nodded neighbour fashion, while Mr. Sundon lifted / his hat, and held it till the parties had passed each other.

As for Lady Bell, she smiled, flushed, and nodded slightly in return, / with a girl's shy, inconsiderate triumph in evading the Squire's / tyrannical mandate, for smiling and nodding were not speaking to the / Sundons-husband and wife.

There was one person close to Lady Bell who was ready to give her a / different version of a wife's duty to a husband than a flighty and very / human subterfuge implied. That person had been regularly commissioned to / lecture Lady Bell and keep an eye on her.

In introducing Lady Bell to his cousin, the vicar's wife, the Squire had / said, half in homely jocoseness, which might have been very well had / there been a good understanding between the ill-matched couple, half in / tart earnestness, "I give my wife into your charge, Ann; you'll look / after her, and see that she minds her duty, and does not get into / scrapes."

"I accept the charge, cousin," responded Mrs. Walsh promptly and with / the utmost gravity; "I'll do my best for the young lady," and she did / not even add, "if she'll allow me; " while poor, touchy, aristocratic / Lady Bell, drew up her dainty figure and tossed her head in vain at the / bargain made, like her marriage itself, will-he nill-he.

Mrs. Walsh was the wife of a hard-working clergyman, who left to her a / share of his public duties and the entire management of his private / concerns, including the intercourse between the parsonage and the / mansion of the Squire, Mrs. Walsh's cousin. When Mr. Walsh was not in / his church or school, he was in his study; and when he was neither in / church, school, nor study, he was reading or praying by some cottage / bedside.