Читать книгу Within the Precincts онлайн

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Mr. Ashford got the better of his shyness in a moment. It did not embarrass him when there was anything to be done. He smiled upon her with a most beautiful beaming smile which altogether changed the character of his face, and put a chair for her, which Lottie, however, did not take. “Surely,” he said, in his melodious voice, suddenly thawed out of the dryness which always got into his throat when he spoke first to a stranger. It has not yet been said that Mr. Ashford’s chief quality as respected the community at St. Michael’s was an unusually beautiful mellow voice. “If there is any way in which I can be of use to you?” he said.

“Oh, yes; so much use! They say you think a great deal about your pupils, Mr. Ashford,” said Lottie, “and I have a brother whom nobody thinks much about——”

That was the moment Lady Caroline chose to return to the drawing-room. The door opened, the ladies swept in one by one, the first looking suspiciously at both Mr. Ashford and Lottie, the second, who knew Mr. Ashford, giving him a smile of recognition, and looking suspiciously only at Lottie, the rest following some one example, some the other. Lottie knew not one of them. She looked trembling for Lady Caroline, and hoped she would be kind, and save her from the utter desolation of standing alone in this smiling and magnificent company. But Lady Caroline coming in last of all, only made her usual salutation to the stranger. She said, “Good evening, Miss Despard,” as she swept her long train of rustling silk over the carpet close to Lottie’s trembling feet, but she put out her hand to Mr. Ashford. “It was so good of you to come,” she said. Alas! Lottie was not even to have the comfort of feeling on the same footing with the minor canon. He was carried off from her just as he had begun to look on her with friendly eyes. The stream flowed towards the other side of the room, where Lady Caroline seated herself on her favourite square sofa. Lottie was left standing all alone against the soft grey of the wall, lighted up by the candles on the mantelpiece. When a person belonging to one class of society ventures to put a rash foot on the sacred confines of another, what has she to expect? It is an old story, and Lottie had gone through it before, and ought to have had more sense, you will say, than to encounter it again. But the silly girl felt it as much as if she had not quite known what would happen to her. She stood still, feeling unable to move, one wave of mortification and indignation going over her after another. How could they be so cruel? What did they ask her for, if they meant to leave her to stand there by herself? And Mr. Ashford, too, was cruel. She had made up her mind to stand by him; but he had been carried away by the first touch; he had not stood by her. Lottie could have torn off the roses with which she had decked herself so hopefully, and stamped her foot upon them. She almost wished she had the courage to do it, to cry out to those careless people and let them see what unkindness they were doing. Meantime she made a very pretty picture without knowing it. “Look at that pretty, sulky girl against the wall,” said the young married lady to her mother. “Lady Caroline must have set her there on purpose to look handsome and ill-tempered. How handsome she is! I never saw such eyelashes in my life; but as sulky as a thundercloud.”