One Maid's Mischief. Fenn George Manville

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to this examination? Of what am I accused?”

      “Why, you know!” exclaimed Miss Maria, excitedly. “Of smiling at a man, miss!” and she seemed to shudder with indignant protest.

      “My dear Maria,” exclaimed Miss Twettenham, severely, “you forget.”

      “I beg your pardon, my dear Hannah!” exclaimed the younger sister, and she drew herself up and tightened her lips more and more.

      “I had intended to have approached the subject with more de – I mean caution,” continued Miss Twettenham; “but since my sister has spoken out so plainly, I will only say that your conduct yesterday, Miss Perowne, places me under the necessity of confining your future walks to the garden.”

      “My conduct?” said the girl, turning her dark eyes full upon the speaker.

      “Your conduct, Miss Helen Perowne,” said the elder lady austerely. “It has for months past been far from in accordance with that we expect from the young ladies placed by their parents in our charge; but yesterday it culminated in the smile and look of intelligence we saw pass between you and that tall, fair gentleman who has of late haunted the outskirts of this place. I think I have your approval in what I say?” she added, turning to her sisters, who both bowed stiffly, and became more rigid than before.

      “Such conduct is worse than unbecoming. It is unladylike to a degree, and what is more, displays so great a want of womanly dignity and self-respect that I am reluctantly compelled to say that we feel our endeavours to instil a right moral tone and thoroughly decorous idea of a young lady’s duties to have been thrown away.”

      There was a slight twitching of the corners of the mouth and an involuntary shrugging of the shoulders here.

      “You are aware, Miss Perowne, that your papa has requested us to resign you to the care of his friend, Dr Bolter, and that in a short time you will cease to be our pupil; but still, while you stay at the Firlawns, we must exact a rigid obedience to our rules, and, as I have said, your liberty must be sadly curtailed while you are in our charge.”

      “As you please,” said the girl, indifferently.

      “You do not deny your fault, then?”

      “No,” said the girl, without turning her eyes from the window.

      “Who was this gentleman – I should say, who is this gentleman?”

      “I really do not know,” said the girl, turning from the window now with a careless look in her eyes, as if of wonder that she should be asked such a question.

      “Have you had any epistolary communication?” said Miss Twettenham, sternly.

      “Not the slightest,” said the girl, coldly; and then she added, after a pause, “If I had I should not have told you!”

      “Miss Perowne!” exclaimed the eldest Miss Twettenham, indignantly.

      “Miss Twettenham,” exclaimed the girl, drawing herself up, and with a flash from her dark eyes full of defiance, “you forget that I am no longer a child. It has suited my father’s purpose to have me detained here among school-children until he found a suitable escort for my return to the East; but I am a woman. As to that absurd episode, it is beneath my notice.”

      “Beneath your notice!” exclaimed Miss Twettenham, while her sisters looked astounded.

      The fair girl laid her hand upon her companion’s arm, but Helen Perowne snatched hers away.

      “I say beneath my notice. A foolish young man thinks proper to stare at me and raises his hat probably at the whole school.”

      “At you, Miss Helen Perowne – at you!” exclaimed Miss Twettenham.

      “Possibly,” said the girl, carelessly, as the flash died out of her eyes, her lids drooped, and she let her gaze wander to the window.

      “I can scarcely tell you how grieved – how hurt we feel,” continued Miss Twettenham, “to find that a young lady who has for so many years enjoyed the – the care, the instruction, the direction of our establishment, should have set so terrible an example to her fellow-pupils.”

      The girl shrugged her shoulders again slightly, and her face assumed a more indifferent air.

      “The time that you have to stay here, Miss Perowne, is very short,” continued the speaker; “but while you do stay it will be under rigid supervision. You may now retire to your room.”

      The girl turned away, and was walking straight out of the room, but years of lessons in deportment asserted themselves, and from sheer habit she turned by the door to make a stately courtesy, frowning and biting her lip directly after as if from annoyance, and passing out with the grace and proud carriage of an Eastern queen.

      “Stop, Miss Stuart,” said Miss Twettenham, as Helen Perowne’s companion was about to follow. “I wish to say a few words to you before you go – not words of anger, my dear child, for the only pain we have suffered through you is in hearing the news that you are so soon to go.”

      “Oh, Miss Twettenham,” exclaimed the girl, hurrying to take the extended hands of the schoolmistress, but to find herself pressed to the old lady’s heart, an embrace which she received in turn from Miss Julia and Miss Maria.

      “We have long felt that it must soon come, my dear,” chirped Miss Maria.

      “Yes, dear,” said Miss Julia, in a prattling way. “You’ve done scolding now, sister, have you not?”

      “Yes,” said Miss Twettenham; “but I wish to speak seriously for a minute or two, and the present seems a favourable opportunity for Grey Stuart to hear.”

      The younger sisters placed the fair young girl in a chair between them, and each held a hand, while Miss Twettenham drew herself up stiffly, hemmed twice, and began:

      “My dear Miss Stuart – I – I – Oh, dear me! Oh, dear me!”

      The poor old lady burst into a violent fit of sobbing as she rose from her seat, for nature was stronger than the stiff varnish of art with which she was encrusted; and holding her handkerchief to her eyes, she crossed the little space between them, and sank down upon her knees before Grey Stuart, passing her arms round her and drawing her to her breast.

      For a few minutes nothing was heard in the stiff old-fashioned drawing-room but suppressed sobs, for the younger sisters wept in concert, and the moist contagion extended to Grey Stuart, whose tears fell fast.

      There was no buckram stiffness in Miss Twettenham’s words when she spoke again, but a very tender, affectionate shake in her voice.

      “It is very weak and foolish, my dear,” she said, “but we were all very much upset; for there is something so shocking in seeing one so young and beautiful as Helen Perowne deliberately defy the best of advice, and persist in going on in her own wilful way. We are schoolmistresses, my dear Grey, and I know we are very formal and stiff; but though we have never been married ladies to have little children of our own, I am sure we have grown to love those placed in our care, so that often and often, when some pupil has been taken away to go to those far-off burning lands, it has been to us like losing a child.”

      “Yes – yes,” sobbed the younger sisters in concert.

      “And now, my dear Grey, I think I can speak a little more

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