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By good luck for Miss Fairfax's favor with her, Pascal's maxim recurred to her memory that though it is not necessary to respect grand people it is necessary to bow to them and her temptation to be merry at Lady Angleby's expense was instantly controlled.
Lady Angleby's loveliest sister had forty years ago aggrieved her whole family by marrying the poor squire of Carisfort; and Lady Angleby had said in Bessie's hearing that her sister was the most enviable woman she knew, happy as the day was long, though so positively indigent as to be thankful for her eldest daughter's half-worn Brentwood finery to smarten up her younger girls.
You have never yet been thrown on your own resources," said Bessie with an air of infinite suggestion. Lady Angleby stared in cold astonishment, but Bessie preserved her gay self-possession. Lady Angleby's cold stare was to most persons utterly confusing.
Everybody talked and was pleasant, and Bessie Fairfax felt almost at ease, so fast does confidence grow in the warm atmosphere of courtesy and kindness. When the ladies retired to the drawing-room she was bidden to approach Lady Angleby's footstool, and treated caressingly; while Mrs.
To this long speech Bessie gave her attention and a submissive assent, followed by a rather silly wish: "I wish it was to Lady Latimer's we were going instead of to Lady Angleby's; I don't like Lady Angleby." "That does not much matter if you preserve the same measure of courtesy toward her as if you did," rejoined her grandfather.
Cecil Burleigh's departure to town so immediately after Lady Angleby's ball might have given rise to remark had he not returned to Brentwood before the month's end, and in excellent spirits. During his brief absence he had, however, found time to run down to the Isle of Wight and see Miss Julia Gardiner. In all trouble and vexation his thoughts still turned to her for rest.
Whether he might put his fate to the touch that night would, he said, depend on opportunity and impulse. Such was the attitude of parties on the famous occasion of Lady Angleby's ball to celebrate her nephew's successful election. Miss Fairfax had been a great help to Miss Burleigh in arranging the fruit and the flowers, and if Mrs.