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From that moment, the restraint he had for the last week or two laid upon himself thus broken through, he never spoke to her except with such rudeness that she no longer ventured to address him even on shop-business; and all the people in the place, George included, following the example so plainly set them, she felt, when, at last, in the month of November, a letter from Hesper heralded the hour of her deliverance, that to take any formal leave would be but to expose herself to indignity.
The whole, if whole it could be called, was a miserable attempt at combining fancy and fashion, and, in result, an ugly nothing. "I see you don't like it!" said Hesper, with a mingling of displeasure and dismay. "I wish you had come a few days sooner! It is much too late to do anything now. I might just as well have gone without showing it to you! Here, Folter!"
Some, who would scorn the idea of a friendship with such as Mary, will be familiar enough with maids as selfish as themselves, and part from them no part with them, the next day, or the next hour, with never a twinge of regret. Of this, Hesper was as capable as any; but friendship is its own justification, and she felt no horror at the new motion of her heart.
Up to this point, Mortimer children had often resisted their mother; beyond this point, never more than once. "No, please, mamma!" returned Hesper, in a tone of expostulation. "I have spoken my mind, but that is no treason. As my father has referred Mr. Redmain to me, I would rather deal with him." Lady Malice was herself afraid of her husband.
"I forget," said Hesper. "I would not have ventured," continued Tom, "had it not happened that both air and words were my own." "Ah! indeed! I did not know you were a poet, Mr. She had forgotten his name. "That or nothing," answered Tom, boldly. "And a musician, too?" "At your service, Mrs. Redmain."
She did not look at Momus, fearing instinctively that the command in her old servant's eyes would not be of a kind with the grateful response she meant to give this stranger. "I have no right to expect so much from a stranger," she said. "Then I shall not be a stranger," he declared promptly. "Call me Hesper of Ephesus." "Ephesus!" she echoed, looking up quickly.
The simplicity of her address and manner, the pains she took to find the exact thing she wanted, and the modest decision with which she answered any reference to her, made Hesper even like her. The most artificially educated of women is yet human, and capable of even more than liking a fellow-creature as such.
No direct suspicion had as yet fallen on Frederick. Relieved on this score, Sweetwater entered more fully into the particulars, and found that though the jury had sat three days, very little more had come to light than was known on the morning he made that bold dash into the Hesper.
"It should not need many days' apprenticeship to make one woman able to dress another." "Not when she is like you, Mary," said Hesper. "It is well the wretch has done my hair for to-night, though! That will be the main difficulty." "It will not be a great one," said Mary, "if you will allow me to undo it when you come home." "I begin almost to believe in a special providence," said Hesper.
The feeling was to herself shapeless and nameless; but, however some of my readers may smile at the notion of a girl who served behind a counter being a lady, and however ready Hesper Mortimer would have been to join them, it was yet a vague sense of the fact that was now embarrassing her, for she was not half lady enough to deal with it.
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