Lady Bell, Volume 1 by Sarah Tytler

There was a whispered colloquy outside the door, succeeded by the / entrance of a frank, open-faced young fellow, looking very comely in his / green coat, and yet retaining a comical likeness to Miss Kingscote.

The gentleman was coming up freely to Lady Bell, prepared to regard her / as an acquisition, in the profits of which he was entitled to a share.

He was not going to address her with the formal "I have the honour," or / "Your servant," but with a friendly jocular "Good morning to you, Miss / Barlowe, now that you have come to hand. Don't let my sister and you put / out your bright eyes with fine stitching," when he, too, was induced to / reverse the usual order of greeting to a companion, though making his / amendment on more intelligent principles than those which had influenced / Miss Kingscote.

Instead of speaking at all, he gave Lady Bell an amazed confused bow in / return for her perfectly calm curtsey, and turned aside muttering to / himself, "By George, she is a highflyer, and no mistake, she must be a / tragedy queen herself."

Miss Kingscote was senselessly elated by the manner in which her / companion struck Master Charles. "Don't you go for to contradict me / again," said his sister, with a meaning chuckle, shaking her fat finger / at the lad; "mum's the word, but we've all heard tell of pearls before / swine."

Lady Bell, in spite of her former heroics, was rather pleased to see in / the dire dearth of sympathy which threatened to prevail in other / quarters at Nutfield, that Master Charles, as his sister generally / styled him, even in addressing him with simple honour and doting / fondness, was personable and companionable.

But he was no such likely mate for Lady Bell, even had she been free, / that she should be carried off her feet by his homespun attractions. / These had not been cultivated beyond the point to which their natural / manliness and intelligence had been brought by the parson of the parish, / who had volunteered to act as young Kingscote of Nutfield's governor, / and by the country town's fencing and dancing master, who had undertaken / to convey to the young fellow a version of the deportment and manners of / a gentleman. But Lady Bell had known fine gentlemen.

Lady Bell had been determined on keeping Master Charles at a distance. / She owed it to the sedateness with which she was bound to behave, and to / her knowledge of the real difference of their rank. So she began by / being very quiet and reserved, and by resisting the faint and finally / bashful advances of the master of the house.

But circumstances were tremendously against Lady Bell.

Nutfield was a country house where winter was approaching. Miss / Kingscote was a garrulous rustic, from whom neither edification nor / enlivenment, except of one kind, could be expected.

Master Charles was a gentleman, although of the plainer sort, / prepossessing in look and speech, not without parts, information, and / spirit, of an age not exceeding twenty-two.

Lady Bell was guileless, ingenuous as far as she dared to be ingenuous, / naturally animated and enterprising, trained in a school of refinement / and finish, and delicately handsome.

Lady Bell was unable to gainsay Master Charles in making friends with / him, so far as allowing him to be on cordial terms with her. Soon he / brought her trophies from the game preserves and hunting field. He / consulted her on his purchases in the little town.

"Look here, Miss Barlowe," he would say, "my tailor tells me this / brocade, of which I have a pattern for a waistcoat, was brought right / from France on an order of Sir Peregrine Cust's. Do you affect it? lend / me your taste."

He told her of his engagements, and gave her a full account of his / sayings and doings, and those of his friends. "I was at Colonel / Barnard's last night," he would mention. "We had games, and the ladies / proposed riddles. I wish my plaguey memory had retained them for the / benefit of Deb and you, Miss Barlowe. What do you think? Miss Polly, the / colonel's daughter, stood up and danced a jig first-rate with her / brother the sailor."

He confessed that he had been longing desperately for his commission, / but he was not so impatient now that Miss Barlowe had kindly consented / to bear his sister company. They formed quite a little colony at home, / who could play cribbage, piquet, or Pope Joan, of an evening, and be / independent of the great world without-not that he was not going where / glory waited him, that he did not mean to earn his right to sit down / like an old man by his modest fire-side.

Lady Bell, though she had sufficient caution to keep her narratives / within bounds, repaid Master Charles's confidences by fine stories out / of her short life with the players, out of the plays she had seen acted, / and the few books which she had read.

She took his advice seriously on the feather trimmings which she was / manufacturing for Miss Kingscote's furbelows, whether the turkeys' / feathers did not "come in vastly pretty as a silver grey after the / golden brown of the pheasants' feathers?"

With a little pressing she sang to him, as an appropriate echo of his / military aspirations, "Over the hills and far away; " she suffered him to / escort her-to be sure Miss Kingscote was generally with her-when he / overtook her on these country roads, which, in the shortening winter / days, were not only barely surmountable in their mud and mire, but which / were frequently forbidden to unattended women in the end of the last / century.

In short, Master Charles and Miss Barlowe were gliding fast into an / innocent, inconsiderate, highly perilous intimacy, which was almost / inevitable between the pair shut up together and shut out from the / world.