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There was no lock to the drawers, which, when they DID open, were full of my hostess's rouge-pots, shoes, stays, and rags; so I allowed my wardrobe to remain in my valise, but set out my silver dressing-apparatus upon the ragged cloth on the drawers, where it shone to great advantage. When Sullivan appeared in the morning, I asked him about my mare, which he informed me was doing well.
As she stood there, one gained an impression that she could have stood thus for an indefinite length of time forever, if necessary. Not once did her gaze wander to her surroundings, and when Lucy conducted her to the room that had been assigned her she entered it without curiosity. "I hope you will be comfortable here," the girl murmured with a hostess's solicitude. "I shall be."
The aborigines set before us rice and beans. After this frugal repast, washed down with cold water, I wanted Lucien to lie down on a large mat; but the restless little being took advantage of his elders being comfortably stretched out to sleep, and ran off to see our hostess's fowls roosting for the night on a dead tree, and then to prowl up and down in company with l'Encuerado.
"No, thanks I'd rather not. I'll stand just here." She gave him the brandy he had asked for. He sipped it slowly, and, pushing his cap further off his brows, turned his dark eyes, full of smouldering fire, upon Lord Wrotham and his friend, both of whom had succeeded in getting up a little conversation with the hostess's younger daughter, the girl named Grace.
But it proved useless, and again she was gathered to her hostess's heart. The strangest feature was Mr. Middleton's behavior. He seemed as surprised and delighted to see his wife appear at lunch, as fearful lest she overtax herself, as if she were her own very opposite.
My head aches badly!" she added, nervously forestalling her hostess's protestations. "Perhaps a cup of tea later, thank you! I should like to rest now. And I shall not want any dinner." "Oh! you'll feel better, dear, when you have rested a bit," said Dame Hartley, smoothing the girl's fair hair with a motherly touch, and not seeming to notice her angry shrinking away.
And Missy, for some reason, grew sort of cross, too; she resented the other girls' unrestrainable hilarity. They wouldn't be so hilarious if it were their own households they were setting topsy-turvy; if they had sixteen "place-cards" yet to finish. In England, the hostess's entertainments went more smoothly. Things were better arranged there.
I cannot help wondering whether the people who talk about the simple life have any idea what it means; I do not think that my fair hostess's desire for it is altogether a pose. One who lives, as she does, in the centre of the fashionable world, must inevitably tire of it from time to time.
Wigglesworth sitting down to dinner at a broad, flat tombstone, carving one of his own plump little marble cherubs, gnawing a pair of cross-bones, and drinking out of a hollow death's-head, or perhaps a lachrymatory vase, or sepulchral urn; while his hostess's dead children waited on him at the ghastly banquet.
The same flood, however, which had swept off our hostess's larder, had swept in a great deal of good company, and she was evidently resolved on setting the one evil over against the other. She now showered upon us a long, rapid, and vehement address; and he who has not heard the Tuscan discourse does not know what volubility is. "What does she say?" I inquired at one of my two Russian friends.
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