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Miss Turnbull now, for the first time, saw Lady Bradstone in a situation in which she was neglected; this served to accelerate the decline and fall of her ladyship's power over her mind. She began to consider her not as a person by whom she had been brought into notice in the circles of fashion, but as one by whom she was prevented from rising to a higher orbit.
When she calmly examined her own heart, she perceived that she felt little or no affection for Lord Bradstone, though she had been flattered by his attentions, when the assiduity of a man of rank and fashion was new to her; but now the joys of being a countess began to fade in her imagination.
Can you, my dearest Miss Turnbull, forget that you did the most imprudent and really unaccountable thing, that ever woman did? Lady Pierrepoint had it from Stock the banker. Now you must be certainly conscious to what I allude." Almeria still looked innocent till Mrs. Vickars produced the book dedicated to Lady Bradstone, for twelve copies of which Miss Turnbull had subscribed.
Miss Lowe had fortunately been able to obtain the score of the Pastorale, and with music and costume complete the performance was an even greater success than it had been on the terrace at Bradstone. People clapped the little figure, partly for her charming dancing and partly for her pluck in trapping the burglar, so that altogether she received quite an ovation.
Lord Bradstone was fond of high play his taste for gaming soon reduced him to distress his guardian was enraged, and absolutely refused to pay his lordship's debts. What was to be done? He must extricate himself from his difficulties by marrying some rich heiress. Miss Turnbull was the heiress nearest at hand.
The consciousness that she was treating Lady Bradstone with insincerity, in encouraging the addresses of her son, increased Miss Turnbull's embarrassment; she repented having for a moment encouraged his clandestine attachment; and she now urged him in the strongest manner to impart his intentions to his mother.
This notion having once taken possession of her mind, she was impatient in the extreme to settle her affairs with Lord Bradstone. He was not at home he did not come in till late in the evening. It happened, that the next day Almeria was to be of age; and Lord Bradstone, when he met her in the evening, reminded her of her promise not "to prolong the torments of suspense beyond that period."
The next day and the next and the next passed without her seeing or hearing any thing of Frederick; and the fourth day, as she rode by the house where the Elmours had lodged, she saw put up in the parlour window an advertisement of "Lodgings to be let." She was now convinced that Frederick had left Cheltenham left it without thinking of her or of Lord Bradstone.
Miss Turnbull was abashed and agitated she hurried out of the room to conceal her confusion, stepped into a carriage with a coronet, drove away, and endeavoured to forget all that had passed. The concert in the evening recalled her usual train of ideas, and she persuaded herself that she had done all, and more than was necessary, in offering to introduce Ellen to Lady Bradstone.
The necklace which hung from her hand, and on which in the midst of her embarrassment her eyes involuntarily fell, seemed to Lady Bradstone proof positive against her. Her ladyship recollected certain words she had heard as she opened the door, and now applied them without hesitation to herself.
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