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Daisy was telling the story of her parents' death, which relation Lady Berenicia had urgently pressed, but now interrupted by saying: "There, that is my husband, with young Mr. Butler." Mr. Jonathan Cross seemed a very honest and sensible gentleman when we came to converse with him; somewhat austere, in the presence of his rattle-headed spouse at least, but polite and well-informed.
"It may easily be that I was not wise, Douw. Indeed, I showed small wisdom from the beginning." "It was all the doing of that old cat, Lady Berenicia!" I said, with melancholy conviction. "Nay, blame not her alone. I was the silly girl to be thus befooled. My heart would have served me better if it had been all good. The longing for finery and luxury was my own. I yearned to be set above the rest.
It dawned upon me after a time that it was contact with that Lady Berenicia which had wrought this change in him, or, rather, had brought forth in his old age a development of his early associations, that, but for her, would to the end have lain hidden, unsuspected, under the manly cover of his simple middle life.
She grew calmer, and with the returning calmness came a fine, cool dignity of manner and tone which curiously reminded me of Lady Berenicia Cross; but she could talk of nothing save her wrongs, or rather those of her husband.
Looking back to lift my hat for the last adieu, I saw the honest old baronet, bareheaded in the clear moonlight, waving his hand from the lowest step, with Lady Berenicia and the others standing above him, outlined upon the illumined doorway, and the negroes grouped on either side, obscurely gesticulating in the shadows of the broad, dark front of the Hall, which glowed against the white sky.
I walked silent, and more or less sulky, between them down the gravelled path. Lady Berenicia chattered steadily. "And so this is the dear little Mistress Daisy of whom Sir William talks so much. How happy one must be to be such a favorite everywhere! And you content to live here, too, leading this simple, pastoral life! How sweet!
And you never weary of it never sigh when it is time to return to it from New York?" "I never have been to New York, nor Albany either," Daisy made answer. Lady Berenicia held up her fan in pretended astonishment. "Never to New York! nor even to Albany! Une vraie belle sauvage! How you amaze me, poor child!" "Oh, I crave no pity, madam," our dear girl answered, cheerily.
Sir William beamed upon us from the end nearest the windows, with Daisy on his left hand and the London dame on the other in the place of distinction to which she was, I suppose, entitled. Below Lady Berenicia sat Mr. Stewart, Sir John, and Walter Butler. I was on the left side below Mr. Cross. These details come back to me as if they were of yesterday, when I think of that dinner.
Although faith in the personal influence of Eve upon the ages is visibly waning in these incredulous, iconoclastic times, there still remains enough respect for the possibilities for mischief inherent within a single silly woman to render Lady Berenicia Cross and her works intelligible, even to the fifth and sixth generations.
"Don't think more about it." I took his hand, though I was not altogether sure about forgetting his words. Lady Berenicia looked at us over her shoulder, as she moved away, with disappointment mantling through the chalk on her cheeks. "My word! I protest they're not going to fight after all," she said. I See My Sweet Sister Dressed in Strange Attire.
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