nobody to her mind like George Ashe. Letty was not the woman to forget her old friends from adventitious circumstances. She was sterling metal. You might as soon expect the deep stream to show an empty bed, or the day to return without its faithful, cheerful handmaid, the dawn.
Letty Brown was in Italy when the next event in her history occurred. The Bridgewaters were posting between Leghorn and Rome. They had just courteously added to their company a sensitive invalided Lieutenant-Colonel, with whom they had some little acquaintance, a poor man who was travelling for his health and excruciating himself with the discomforts and loneliness of his life. They were in all the exigencies of the road, when their courier was suddenly taken from them by an official mandate in order to deliver evidence on an unusual act of violence which he had seen perpetrated when he was travelling with the illustrious Inglese who had been his last employer. The judge concerned had cleverly caught the witness when he was passing through the town again, and would on no account let him go till he had told his story formally, in spite of the threats and complaints and shamefaced donations of the other illustrious Inglese who must proceed; the latter would be driven into a fit of the spleen if he did not go forward, and yet it was certain he could not move without the hired escort and patronage of his ubiquitous, all important Joachim.
The affair was not very formidable. The little posting town, with its grey gateway and gaudy shrine, where the arrest took place, afforded at least decent accommodation for a halt. There was not the most distant suspicion or apprehension of collusion, fraud, or pillage. “Per Bacco!” as Joachim swore passionately, an English subject was safe in his own castle anywhere. It was only a temporary delay with its temporary discomforts, still it put these good Bridgewaters to their wits’ end. They were good—so well bred that they had little assumption, so upright as to have few suspicions; but I never said they were perfect, and one phase of refinement and amiability is almost as bad as a lie which has no legs—it cannot stand alone.
How Letty ran up and down, how she spun out her stock of Italian, how she unroped boxes and unclasped cases, found this clothes-brush and that spirit lamp, and soothed the disconsolate family and their more disconsolate satellites, who of course, as a rule, copied their principals, is a matter which fairly baffles all description.
The Colonel was an admirer of despatch and ingenuity; he had learned their benefit in his military shifts. He pulled his grizzled moustache in admiration of this young woman. She was more valuable than Joachim, if anybody could be more than all important; and whereas Joachim was ugly as a baboon and like a galvanised figure tucked into a skin of brown leather, this young woman was handsome, was neat-handed—which was the Colonel’s definition of graceful,—she had spirit, she had ability, she was fit to be a general. When Joachim was free, and the travellers had gone their way, reached their destination, and were settled in different quarters of the Eternal City, the first time the Colonel had an attack of chronic ague, he sent his landlady, who on holidays displayed the richest mass of black hair and the heaviest gold earrings in the locality, with his respects and apologies, and an earnest solicitation that Mrs. Bridgewater would spare him Miss Brown to preside over his soup and chocolate to see that he was not poisoned, to read his Times to him, and prevent him going distracted with the half-foreign gibberish of the puppy who had undertaken the task.
The poor Colonel’s unsophisticated petition afforded no little amusement even to these complaisant hearts, but Mrs. Bridgewater did not hesitate to comply with its prayer. The Colonel was an honourable old man, and there was no etiquette for a girl in Brown’s rank.
As for Letty, she would as soon live on the one side of the giant dome as on the other, and she rightly judged the invitation a great compliment: so Letty went to the old Colonel’s establishment above an artist’s studio, and took care of the Colonel and cheered him back to comparative health like an attentive, deferential daughter.
It was as much to Letty Brown’s amazement as to the Bridgewaters’ consternation, that the night before that on which she was to return to her real employers, the Colonel called her to his side, and, in brief but perfectly respectful terms, asked her to become his wife. Letty had no wish to consider her answer, but the Colonel insisted that she should take time to think over his proposal, and gave her liberty to submit it to her mistress, and I need not say the Colonel was accustomed to be obeyed.
The Bridgewaters had a true regard for Letty, but the communication put them dreadfully about—it was worse than Joachim’s compulsory desertion. Travelling, like poverty, might induce them to fraternise with their inferiors; but to marry them—where the one party was a Lieutenant-Colonel of good family, and in possession of an ample fortune besides his pay, and, not till now reckoned more than crabbed, on the high road to craziness, and the other was a waiting-maid, born a factory girl—well, this was an extension of the suffrage with a vengeance! Had the Bridgewaters lent a hand to entangle the wilful old Colonel in the net he had woven for himself, would not all his friends, from the nearest to the most distant, come upon the Bridgewaters in their righteous indignation, and demand unimaginable compensation?
My readers must feel that these affable Bridgewaters were in a disagreeable predicament.
Mrs. Bridgewater was never more relieved in her life than when Letty, blushing very much, but quite determinedly, declared her intention of declining, with her service and her thanks, the proposal which would have turned the heads of half the girls in Letty’s line. Mrs. Bridgewater could have kissed and hugged her favourite on the spot. Such a perception of propriety, so much moderation and consideration! Letty was a fine creature; moreover, she had proved herself a philosopher.
While rejoicing in the result, Mrs. Bridgewater, in the middle of her lady-like gentleness and softness, was very inquisitive to penetrate the origin of such philosophy. Then Letty confessed, with