Sprig Muslin

Amanda raised her brilliant eyes to Lady Hester’s gentle gray ones, and suddenly smiled. The effect of this upon the assembled gentlemen caused Lady Widmore’s already high colour to deepen alarmingly. Mr Theale, who had been regarding the youthful beauty with the eye of a dispassionate connoisseur, sighed soulfully; the Earl’s indignant stare changed to one of reluctant admiration; and Lord Widmore was moved to adjust his neckcloth, throwing out his narrow chest a little. However, as he caught his wife’s fulminating eye at that moment, he was speedily recalled to a sense of his position, and altered a somewhat fatuous smile to a frown.

‘An awkward situation indeed!’ agreed Lady Widmore, subjecting Amanda to a critical scrutiny. ‘But you have your abigail with you, I must suppose!’

‘No, because she fell ill, and, besides, there was no room for her in the curricle,’ replied Amanda, with aplomb.

‘In the curricle?’ exclaimed Lord Widmore, looking very much shocked. ‘Driving with Ludlow in a curricle, without some respectable female to chaperon you? Upon my soul! I do not know what the world is coming to!’

‘Now, don’t talk like a nick-ninny, Cuthbert!’ begged his uncle. ‘Damme if I see what anyone wants with a chaperon in a curricle! If it had been a chaise, it would have been another matter, of course.’

‘If Miss Smith was travelling in Sir Gareth’s charge, sir, she had no need of her abigail to take care of her,’ interposed Hester, her tone mildly reproving.

‘No,’ said Amanda gratefully. ‘And I had no desire to go with him, either, and am very well able to take care of myself!’

‘You have had your hands full, I collect!’ Lady Widmore said, putting up her sandy brows at Sir Gareth.

‘Not at all!’ he retorted. ‘I have had a charming companion, ma’am!’

‘Oh, I don’t doubt that!’ she said, with a laugh. ‘Well, child, I suppose I had best take you upstairs! You will wish to change your dress before dinner. I daresay they will have unpacked your trunk by now.’

‘Yes,’ said Amanda doubtfully. ‘I mean – that is –’ She stopped, blushing, and looking imploringly towards Sir Gareth.

He responded at once to this mute appeal, saying, with the flicker of a reassuring smile: ‘That is the most awkward feature of the whole business, isn’t it, Amanda? Her trunk, ma’am, I must suppose to be at Oundle, for it was despatched by carrier yesterday. We could find room only for a couple of bandboxes in my curricle.’

‘Despatched yesterday?’ said the Earl. ‘Seems an odd circumstance, then, that these relations of hers shouldn’t have kept their engagement to meet her! What the devil should she send her trunk for, if she didn’t mean to follow it?’

‘That, sir,’ said Sir Gareth, quite unshaken, ‘is what makes us fear some mischance.’

‘I expect it has been delayed,’ said Lady Hester. ‘How vexing! But not of the least consequence.’

‘Lord, Hetty, what an addle-brained creature you are!’ remarked Lady Widmore, with good-natured contempt. ‘If it ain’t of any consequence, it ain’t vexing either!’

‘How silly of me!’ murmured Hester, accepting this rebuke in an absentminded way. ‘Will you let me take you upstairs, Miss Smith? Don’t put yourself about, Almeria! I will attend to Miss Smith.’

Amanda looked rather relieved; and Sir Gareth, who had moved to the door, said, under his breath, as Hester paused beside him to let her guest pass before her out of the room: ‘Thank you! I knew I might rely on you.’

She smiled a little wistfully, but said nothing. He closed the door behind her, and she paused for a moment, looking at Amanda, and blinking as though in an attempt to bring that enchanting face into focus. Amanda gave her back stare for stare, her chin well up, and she said, in her shy, soft voice: ‘How very pretty you are! I wonder which room Mrs Farnham has prepared for you? It must be wretchedly uncomfortable for you, but pray don’t heed it! We will think just what should be done presently.’

‘Well,’ said Amanda, following her to the staircase, ‘for my part, I can see that it is most uncomfortable for you to be obliged to receive me when I haven’t an evening-gown to wear, and as for Sir Gareth

, it is all his fault, and he told you nothing but the most shocking untruths, besides having abducted me!’

Hester paused, with her hand on the banister-rail, and looked back, startled. ‘Abducted you? Dear me, how excessively odd of him! Are you quite sure you are not making a mistake?’

‘No, it is precisely as I say,’ replied Amanda firmly. ‘For I never set eyes on him before today, and although at first I was quite deceived in him, because he looks just like all one’s favourite heroes, which all goes to show that one shouldn’t set any store by appearances, I now know that he is a most odious person – though still very like Sir Lancelot and Lord Orville,’ she added conscientiously.

Lady Hester looked wholly bewildered. ‘How can this be? You know, I am dreadfully stupid, and I don’t seem able to understand at all, Miss Smith!’

‘I wish you will call me Amanda!’ suddenly decided that damsel. ‘I find I cannot bear the name of Smith! The thing is that it was the only name I could think of when nothing would do for Sir Gareth but to know who I was. I daresay you know how it is when you are obliged, on the instant, to find a name for yourself?’

‘No – that is, I have never had occasion – but of course I see that one would think of something very simple,’ Hester replied apologetically.

‘Exactly so! Only you can have no idea how disagreeable it is to be called Miss Smith, which, as it happens, was the name of the horridest governess I ever had!’

Utterly befogged, Hester said: ‘Yes, indeed, although – You know, I think we should not stay talking here, for one never knows who may be listening! Do, pray, come upstairs!’

She then led Amanda to the upper hall, where they were met by her abigail, a middle-aged woman of hostile aspect, whose devotion to her mistress’s interests caused her to view Amanda with suspicion and dislike. The news that Sir Gareth Ludlow had arrived at Brancaster with a regular out-and-outer on his arm had rapidly spread through the house; and Miss Povey knew just what to think of beauties who possessed no other luggage than a couple of bandboxes, and travelled unattended by their abigails or governesses. She informed Lady Hester that the Blue bedchamber had been prepared for the Young Person: an announcement that brought Lady Hester’s eyes to her face, a tiny frown in them. ‘What did you say, Povey?’ she asked.

The tone was as gentle as ever, but Miss Povey, permitting herself only the indulgence of a sniff, lost no time in altering her phraseology. ‘For the young lady, I should say, my lady.’