at times it went hard with him to keep even the poor household he had.
Mistress Clorinda’s fortunes the gentry of the neighbourhood discussed with growing interest and curiosity. What was like to become of her great gifts and powers in the end, if she could never show them to the great world, and have the chance to carry her splendid wares to the fashionable market where there were men of quality and wealth who would be like to bid for them. She had not chosen to accept any of those who had offered themselves so far, and it was believed that for some reason she had held off my lord of Dunstanwolde in his suit. ’Twas evident that he admired her greatly, and why he had not already made her his countess was a sort of mystery which was productive of many discussions and bore much talking over. Some said that, with all her beauty and his admiration, he was wary and waited, and some were pleased to say that the reason he waited was because the young lady herself contrived that he should, it being her desire to make an open conquest of Sir John Oxon, and show him to the world as her slave, before she made up her mind to make even a much greater match. Some hinted that for all her disdainfulness and haughty pride she would marry Sir John if he asked her, but that he being as brilliant a beau as she a beauty, he was too fond of his pleasures and his gay town life to give them up even to a goddess who had no fortune. His own had not been a great one, and he had squandered it magnificently, his extravagances being renowned in the world of fashion, and having indeed founded for him his reputation.
It was, however, still his way to accept frequent hospitalities from his kinsman Eldershawe, and Sir Jeoffry was always rejoiced enough to secure him as his companion for a few days when he could lure him from the dissipation of the town. At such times it never failed that Mistress Wimpole and poor Anne kept their guard. Clorinda never allowed them to relax their vigilance, and Mistress Wimpole ceased to feel afraid, and became accustomed to her duties, but Anne never did so. She looked always her palest and ugliest when Sir John was in the house, and she would glance with sad wonder and timid adoration from him to Clorinda; but sometimes when she looked at Sir John her plain face would grow crimson, and once or twice he caught her at the folly, and when she dropped her eyes overwhelmed with shame, he faintly smiled to himself, seeing in her a new though humble conquest.
There came a day when in the hunting-field there passed from mouth to mouth a rumour, and Sir Jeoffry, hearing it, came pounding over on his big black horse to his daughter and told it to her in great spirits.
“He is a sly dog, John Oxon,” he said, a broad grin on his rubicund face. “This very week he comes to us, and he and I are cronies, yet he has blabbed nothing of what is being buzzed about by all the world.”
“He has learned how to keep a closed mouth,” said Mistress Clorinda, without asking a question.
“But ’tis marriage he is so mum about, bless ye!” said Sir Jeoffry. “And that is not a thing to be hid long. He is to be shortly married, they say. My lady, his mother, has found him a great fortune in a new beauty but just come to town. She hath great estates in the West Indies, as well as a fine fortune in England—and all the world is besieging her; but Jack hath come and bowed sighing before her, and writ some verses, and borne her off from them all.”
“’Tis time,” said Clorinda, “that he should marry some woman who can pay his debts and keep him out of the spunging house, for to that he will come if he does not play his cards with skill.”
Sir Jeoffry looked at her askance and rubbed his red chin.
“I wish thou hadst liked him, Clo,” he said, “and ye had both had fortunes to match. I love the fellow, and ye would have made a handsome pair.”
Mistress Clorinda laughed, sitting straight in her saddle, her fine eyes unblenching, though the sun struck them.
“We had fortunes to match,” she said—“I was a beggar and he was a spendthrift. Here comes Lord Dunstanwolde.”
And as the gentleman rode near, it seemed to his dazzled eyes that the sun so shone down upon her because she was a goddess and drew it from the heavens.
In the west wing of the Hall ’twas talked of between Mistress Wimpole and her charges, that a rumour of Sir John Oxon’s marriage was afloat.
“Yet can I not believe it,” said Mistress Margery; “for if ever a gentleman was deep in love, though he bitterly strove to hide it, ’twas Sir John, and with Mistress Clorinda.”
“But she,” faltered Anne, looking pale and even agitated—“she was always disdainful to him and held him at arm’s length. I—I wished she would have treated him more kindly.”
“’Tis not her way to treat men kindly,” said Mistress Wimpole.
But whether the rumour was true or false—and there were those who bestowed no credit upon it, and said it was mere town talk, and that the same things had been bruited abroad before—it so chanced that Sir John paid no visit to his relative or to Sir Jeoffry for several months. ’Twas heard once that he had gone to France, and at the French Court was making as great a figure as he had made at the English one, but of this even his kinsman Lord Eldershawe could speak no more certainly than he could of the first matter.
The suit of my Lord of Dunstanwolde—if suit it was—during these months appeared to advance somewhat. All orders of surmises were made concerning it—that Mistress Clorinda had privately quarrelled with Sir John and sent him packing; that he had tired of his love-making, as ’twas well known he had done many times before, and having squandered his possessions and finding himself in open straits, must needs patch up his fortunes in a hurry with the first heiress whose estate suited him. But ’twas the women who said these things; the men swore that no man could tire of or desert such spirit and beauty, and that if Sir John Oxon stayed away ’twas because he had been commanded to do so, it never having been Mistress Clorinda’s intention to do more than play with him awhile, she having been witty against him always for a fop, and meaning herself to accept no man as a husband who could not give her both rank and wealth.
“We know her,” said the old boon companions of her childhood, as they talked of her over their bottles. “She knew her price and would bargain for it when she was not eight years old, and would give us songs and kisses but when she was paid for them with sweet things and knickknacks from the toy-shops. She will marry no man who cannot make her at least a countess, and she would take him but because there was not a duke at hand. We know her, and her beauty’s ways.”
But they did not know her; none knew her, save herself.
In the west wing, which grew more bare and ill-furnished as things wore out and time went by, Mistress Anne waxed thinner and paler. She was so thin in two months’ time, that her soft, dull eyes looked twice their natural size, and seemed to stare piteously at people. One day, indeed, as she sat at work in her sister’s room, Clorinda being there at the time, the beauty, turning and beholding her face suddenly, uttered a violent exclamation.
“Why look you at me so?” she said. “Your eyes stand out of your head like a new-hatched, unfeathered bird’s. They irk me with their strange asking look. Why do you stare at me?”
“I do not know,” Anne faltered. “I could not tell you, sister. My eyes seem to stare so because of my thinness. I have seen them in my mirror.”
“Why do you grow thin?” quoth Clorinda harshly. “You are not ill.”
“I—I do not know,” again Anne faltered. “Naught ails me. I do not know. For—forgive me!”
Clorinda laughed.
“Soft little fool,” she said, “why
