The Countess mournfully admitted it.
“There lies your danger with Mr. Duffian, Louisa.”
“What! do you doubt my virtue?” asked the Countess.
“Pish! I fear something different. You understand me. Mr. Duffian’s moral reputation is none of the best, perhaps.”
“That was before he renegaded,” said the Countess.
Harriet bluntly rejoined: “You will leave that house a Roman Catholic.”
“Now you have spoken,” said the Countess, pluming. “Now let me explain myself. My dear, I have fought worldly battles too long and too earnestly. I am rightly punished. I do but quote Herbert Duffian’s own words: he is no flatterer—though you say he has such soft fingers. I am now engaged in a spiritual contest. He is very wealthy! I have resolved to rescue back to our Church what can benefit the flock of which we form a portion, so exceedingly!”
At this revelation of the Countess’s spiritual contest, Mrs. Andrew shook a worldly head.
“You have no chance with men there, Louisa.”
“My Harriet complains of female weakness!”
“Yes. We are strong in our own element, Louisa. Don’t be tempted out of it.”
Sublime, the Countess rose:
“Element! am I to be confined to one? What but spiritual solaces could assist me to live, after the degradations I have had heaped on me? I renounce the world. I turn my sight to realms where caste is unknown. I feel no shame there of being a tailor’s daughter. You see, I can bring my tongue to name the thing in its actuality. Once, that member would have blistered. Confess to me that, in spite of your children, you are tempted to howl at the idea of Lymport—”
The Countess paused, and like a lady about to fire off a gun, appeared to tighten her nerves, crying out rapidly—
“Shop! Shears! Geese! Cabbage! Snip! Nine to a man!”
Even as the silence after explosions of cannon, that which reigned in the room was deep and dreadful.
“See,” the Countess continued, “you are horrified: you shudder. I name all our titles, and if I wish to be red in my cheeks, I must rouge. It is in verity, as if my senseless clay were pelted, as we heard of Evan at his first Lymport boys’ school. You remember when he told us the story? He lisped a trifle then. ‘I’m the thon of a thnip.’ Oh! it was hell-fire to us, then; but now, what do I feel? Why, I avowed it to Herbert Duffian openly, and he said, that the misfortune of dear papa’s birth did not the less enable him to proclaim himself in conduct a nobleman’s offspring—”
“Which he never was.” Harriet broke the rhapsody in a monotonous low tone: the Countess was not compelled to hear.
“—and that a large outfitter—one of the very largest, was in reality a merchant, whose daughters have often wedded nobles of the land, and become ancestresses! Now, Harriet, do you see what a truly religious mind can do for us in the way of comfort? Oh! I bow in gratitude to Herbert Duffian. I will not rest till I have led him back to our fold, recovered from his error. He was our own preacher and pastor. He quitted us from conviction. He shall return to us from conviction.”
The Countess quoted texts, which I respect, and will not repeat. She descanted further on spiritualism, and on the balm that it was to tailors and their offspring; to all outcasts from society.
Overpowered by her, Harriet thus summed up her opinions: “You were always self-willed, Louisa.”
“Say, full of sacrifice, if you would be just,” added the Countess; “and the victim of basest ingratitude.”
“Well, you are in a dangerous path, Louisa.”
Harriet had the last word, which usually the Countess was not disposed to accord; but now she knew herself strengthened to do so, and was content to smile pityingly on her sister.
Full upon them in this frame of mind, arrived Caroline’s great news from Beckley.
It was then that the Countess’s conduct proved a memorable refutation of cynical philosophy: she rejoiced in the good fortune of him who had offended her! though he was not crushed and annihilated (as he deserved to be) by the wrong he had done, the great-hearted woman pardoned him!
Her first remark was: “Let him thank me for it or not, I will lose no moment in hastening to load him with my congratulations.”
Pleasantly she joked Andrew, and defended him from Harriet now.
“So we are not all bankrupts, you see, dear brother-in-law.”
Andrew had become so demoralised by his own plot, that in every turn of events he scented a similar piece of human ingenuity. Harriet was angry with his disbelief, or, say, the grudging credit he gave to the glorious news. Notwithstanding her calmness, the thoughts of Lymport had sickened her soul, and it was only for the sake of her children, and from a sense of the dishonesty of spending a farthing of the money belonging, as she conceived, to the creditors, that she had consented to go.
“I see your motive, Mr. Cogglesby,” she observed. “Your measures are disconcerted. I will remain here till my brother gives me shelter.”
“Oh, that’ll do, my love; that’s all I want,” said Andrew, sincerely.
“Both of you, fools!” the Countess interjected. “Know you Evan so little? He will receive us anywhere: his arms are open to his kindred: but to his heart the road is through humiliation, and it is to his heart we seek admittance.”
“What do you mean?” Harriet inquired.
“Just this,” the Countess answered in bold English; and her eyes were lively, her figure elastic: “We must all of us go down to the old shop and shake his hand there—every man Jack of us!—I’m only quoting the sailors, Harriet—and that’s the way to win him.”
She snapped her fingers, laughing. Harriet stared at her, and so did Andrew, though for a