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Somewhat out of breath, but very happy, she looked with eager eyes from one guardian to the other. Darden emptied and refilled his pipe, scattering the ashes upon the book of jests. "Very good," he said briefly. Into the thin visage of the ex-waiting-woman, who had been happier at my Lady Squander's than in a Virginia parsonage, there crept a tightened smile.
There's not a parlor in this parish that does not set my teeth on edge! Now at my Lady Squander's" She embarked upon reminiscences of past splendor, checked only by her husband's impatient demand for dinner. Audrey, preparing to follow her into the kitchen, was stopped, as she would have passed the table, by the minister's heavy hand.
The two crossed the garden, and entered the grape arbor where in September Mistress Stagg had entertained her old friend, my Lady Squander's sometime waiting-maid. Now the vines were bare of leaves, and the sunshine streaming through lay in a flood upon the earth. Mary Stagg's chair was set in that golden warmth, and upon the ground beside it had fallen some bright sewing.
Mistress Deborah was loath, enough to take leave of damask and mirrors and ornaments of china, the latter fine enough and curious enough to remind her of Lady Squander's own drawing-room; but the leaf of paper which Haward wrote upon, tore from his pocket-book, and gave her provided consolation. Her thanks were very glib, her curtsy was very deep.
"What with the theatre, and the bowling green, and tea in your summer-house, and dancing lessons, and the sale of these fine things, you and Charles must turn a pretty penny! The luck that some folk have! You were always fortunate, Mary." Mistress Stagg did not deny the imputation. But she was a kindly soul, who had not forgotten the gift of my Lady Squander's pink alamode.
She disappeared, and the black girl showed the two guests through the hall and up a tiny stairway into a little dormer-windowed, whitewashed room. Mistress Deborah, who still wore remnants of my Lady Squander's ancient gifts of spoiled finery, had likewise failed to discard the second-hand fine-lady airs acquired during her service.
"The roses at Fair View bloom early," he said, turning her about that he might better see the red cluster in her hair. "Look you, Audrey! I wish you no great harm, child. You mind me at times of one that I knew many years ago, before ever I was chaplain to my Lord Squander or husband to my Lady Squander's waiting-woman.
La! the flowers that used to wither beneath the candles at my Lady Squander's!" Audrey, finding the two men in conversation beneath the apple-tree, passed on to the ragged garden, where clumps of hardy, bright-colored flowers played hide-and-seek with currant and gooseberry bushes. Haward saw her go, and broke the thread of his discourse.
Her gaze had been upon him since he passed the minister's pew, where she stood between my Lady Squander's ex-waiting-woman and the branded schoolmaster, but now their eyes came full together. She was dressed in some coarse dark stuff, above which rose the brown pillar of her throat and the elusive, singular beauty of her face. There was a flower in her hair, placed as he had placed the rosebuds.
And she saw the best of company at my Lady Squander's, no lack there of kisses and guineas and fine gentlemen, you may be sure! There's a deal of change in this mortal world, and it's generally for the worse. Here, child, you may whip this lace on Mr. Lightfoot's ruffles. I think myself lucky, I can tell you, that there are so few women in Cato.
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