upon her tumbled muslin dress, and her black hair pushed anyhow away from the broad low brow.
“I hope that foolish Sigismund won’t meet Miss Sleaford again,” George thought, very gravely; “he might be silly enough to marry her, and I’m sure she’d never make a good wife for any man.”
George Gilbert’s father died in the autumn of ‘52; and early in the following spring the young man received a letter from his friend Mr. Smith. Sigismund wrote very discursively about his own prospects and schemes, and gave his friend a brief synopsis of the romance he had last begun. George skimmed lightly enough over this part of the letter; but as he turned the leaf by-and-by, he saw a name that brought the blood to his face. He was vexed with himself for that involuntary blush, and sorely puzzled to know why he should be so startled by the unexpected sight of Isabel Sleaford’s name.
“You made me promise to tell you anything that turned up about the Sleafords,” Sigismund wrote. “You’ll be very much surprised to hear that Miss Sleaford came to me the other day here in my chambers, and asked me if I could help her in any way to get her living. She wanted me to recommend her as a nursery-governess, or companion, or something of that kind, if I knew of any family in want of such a person. She was staying at Islington with a sister of her step-mother’s, she told me; but she couldn’t be a burthen on her any longer. Mrs. Sleaford and the boys have gone to live in Jersey, it seems, on account of things being cheap there; and I have no doubt that boy Horace will become an inveterate smoker. Poor Sleaford is dead. You’ll be as much astounded as I was to hear this. Isabel did not tell me this at first; but I saw that she was dressed in black, and when I asked her about her father, she burst out crying, and sobbed as if heart would break. I should like to have ascertained what the poor fellow died of, and all about it,—for Sleaford was not an old man, and one of the most powerful-looking fellows I ever saw,—but I could not torture Izzie with questions while she was in such a state of grief and agitation. ‘I’m very sorry you’ve lost your father, my dear Miss Sleaford,’ I said: and she sobbed out something that I scarcely heard, and I got her some cold water to drink, and it was ever so long before she came round again and was able to talk to me. Well, I couldn’t think of anybody that was likely to help her that day; but I took the address of her aunt’s house at Islington, and promised to call upon her there in a day or two. I wrote by that day’s post to my mother, and asked her if she could help me; and she wrote back by return to tell me that my uncle, Charles Raymond, at Conventford, was in want of just such a person as Miss Sleaford (of course I had endowed Isabel with all the virtues under the sun), and if I really thought Miss S. would suit, and I could answer for the perfect respectability of her connections and antecedents,—it isn’t to be supposed that I was going to say anything about that three quarters’ rent, or that I should own that Isabel’s antecedents were lolling in a garden-chair reading novels, or going on suspicious errands to the jeweller (‘O my prophetic soul!’ et cetera) in the Walworth Road,—why, I was to engage Miss S. at twenty pounds a year salary. I went up to Islington that very afternoon, although I was a number and a half behind with ‘The Demon of the Galleys’ (‘The D. of the G.’ is a sequel to ‘The Brand upon the Shoulder-blade;’ the proprietor of the ‘Penny Parthenon’ insisted upon having a sequel, and I had to bring Colonel Montefiasco to life again, after hurling him over a precipice three hundred feet high),—and the poor girl began to cry when I told her I’d found a home for her. I’m afraid she’s had a great deal of trouble since the Sleafords left Camberwell; for she isn’t at all the girl she was. Her step-mother’s sister is a vulgar woman who lets lodgings, and there’s only one servant—such a miserable slavey; and Isabel went to the door three times while I was there. You know my uncle Raymond, and you know what a dear jolly fellow he is; so you may guess the change will be a very pleasant one for poor Izzie. By the bye, you might call and see her the first time you’re in Conventford, and write me word how the poor child gets on. I thought she seemed a little frightened at the idea of going among strangers. I saw her off at Euston Square the day before yesterday. She went by the parliamentary train; and I put her in charge of a most respectable family going all the way through, with six children, and a birdcage, and a dog, and a pack of cards to play upon a tea-tray on account of the train being slow.”
Mr. Gilbert read this part of his friend’s letter three times over before he was able to realize the news contained in it. Mr. Sleaford dead, and Isabel settled as a nursery-governess at Conventford! If the winding Wayverne had overflowed its sedgy banks and flooded all Midlandshire, the young surgeon could have been scarcely more surprised than he was by the contents of his friend’s letter. Isabel at Conventford—within eleven miles of Graybridge; within eleven miles of him at that moment, as he walked up and down the little room, with his hair tumbled all about his flushed good-looking face, and Sigismund’s letter in his waistcoat!
What was it to him that Isabel Sleaford was so near? What was she to him, that he should think of her, or be fluttered by the thought that she was within his reach? What did he know of her? Only that she had eyes that were unlike any other eyes he had ever looked at; eyes that haunted his memory like strange stars seen in a feverish dream. He knew nothing of her but this: and that she had a pretty, sentimental manner, a pensive softness in her voice, and sudden flights and capricious changes of expression that had filled his mind with wonder.
George went back to the kitchen and smoked another cigar in Mr. Jeffson’s company. He went back to that apartment fully determined to waste no more of his thoughts upon Isabel Sleaford, who was in sober truth a frivolous, sentimental creature, eminently adapted to make any man miserable; but somehow or other, before the cigar was finished, George had told his earliest friend and confidant all about Mr. Sleaford’s family, touching very lightly upon Isabel’s attractions, and speaking of a visit to Conventford as a disagreeable duty that friendship imposed.
“Of course I shouldn’t think of going all that way on purpose to see Miss Sleaford,” he said, “though Sigismund seems to expect me to do so; but I must go to Conventford in the course of the week, to see about those drugs Johnson promised to get me. They won’t make a very big parcel, and I can bring them home in my coat-pocket. You might trim Brown Molly’s fetlocks, Jeff; she’ll look all the better for it. I’ll go on Thursday; and yet I don’t know that I couldn’t better spare the time tomorrow.”
“To-morrow’s market-day, Master Jarge. I was thinkin’ of goin’ t’ Conventford mysen. I might bring t’ droogs for thee, and thoo couldst write a noate askin’ after t’ young leddy,” Mr. Jeffson remarked, thoughtfully.
George shook his head. “That would never do, Jeff,” he said; “Sigismund asks me to go and see her.”
Mr. Jeffson relapsed into a thoughtful silence, out of which he emerged by-and-by with a slow chuckle.
“I reckon Miss Sleaford’ll be a pretty girl,” he remarked, thoughtfully, with rather a sly glance at his young master.
George Gilbert found it necessary to enter into an elaborate explanation upon this subject. No; Miss Sleaford was not pretty. She had no colour in her cheeks, and her nose was nothing particular,—not a beautiful queenlike hook, like that of Miss Harleystone, the belle of Graybridge, who was considered like the youthful members of the peerage,—and her mouth wasn’t very small, and her forehead was low; and, in short, some people might think Miss Sleaford plain.
“But thoo doesn’t, Master Jarge!” exclaimed Mr. Jeffson, clapping his hand upon his knee with an intolerable chuckle; “thoo thinkst summoat of her. I’ll lay; and I’ll trim Brown Molly’s fetlocks till she looks as genteel as a thoroughbred.”
“Thoo’rt an old fondy!” cried Mrs. Jeffson, looking up from her needlework. “It isn’t one of these London lasses as’ll make a good wife for Master Jarge; and he’d never be that soft as to go running after nursery-governesses at Conventford, when he might have Miss Burdock and all her money, and be one of the first gentlefolks in Graybridge.”
“Hold
