Imogen; Or, Only Eighteen. Mrs. Molesworth

Trixie; it’s quite exciting, upon my word. We must be cautious and watchful; first get to know our materials thoroughly. They are arriving to-day, you say, about the usual time?”

      “Yes, the four o’clock train; that gets them here for tea in the drawing-room. There are several people coming. The young Girards, newly married, you know; but no nonsense about them, and up to any fun. They were both engaged to other people, you remember, and threw them over in the neatest way. And Gerty Custance and her brother, etc, etc.”

      “When is Gerty going to retire; she must be nine-and-twenty?” said Miss Forsyth. But Trixie took no notice beyond an interjected “She’s Alicia’s friend, not mine,” and went on with her list. “So that you see, among so many, it will not be difficult to feel our way. The girl will be frightened out of her wits, and ready to cling to the first that offers. She’s never been anywhere, and thinks herself a peerless beauty; and they’re not rich, or clever, or anything. Fancy mamma asking such sticks of people!”

      “And does Major Rex know anything of them? Why is he taking them up in this way?” asked Miss Forsyth.

      “For no reason in the world except spite—spite at me, and priggishness,” said Trixie.

      Mabella smiled. Her smile was not a pleasant one, and did not, as some smiles do, lighten up or soften her undeniably plain face.

      “Spite at you, Trixie,” she said. “Excuse me; you like straightforward speaking, you always say. I scarcely think Major Winchester would give himself the trouble of going out of his way to spite you; he doesn’t think you worth it.”

      “Thank you,” said Beatrix.

      “It’s more likely priggishness, as you say, or contradiction,” pursued Miss Forsyth. “I wouldn’t even flatter him by calling it quixotry. It’s all conceit and love of meddling and thinking himself a saint. Oh, I do detest him, cordially!”

      “After all, he’s my cousin,” said Trixie; “you might as well be civil when you speak of him, and if you know so much about his motives, why do you ask me what they are?”

      Her tone was snappish, but her friend did not seem to notice what she said. Her eyes—Mabella had rather good dark eyes, they were her one “feature”—were fixed on vacancy, but her lips moved, though no words were audible. Suddenly she moved to Beatrix.

      “I have it!” she exclaimed; “or I’m beginning to have it. No! I’m not going to tell you yet. I must know my ground and my puppets better first. But something I must say to you, my dear; you’re too clumsy for anything; you’ll be overdoing your part, I’m certain. Now, oblige me by telling me how you are intending to receive Miss Wentworth and her adoring mamma.”

      “Oh, of course, very nicely,” said Beatrix, opening her eyes. “I shall be particular how I speak, and I shall try to seem—well, rather more of an ingénue than you consider me. And I’ll trouble you, to keep out of my way, if you please, Mab, and not come out with any of your agreeable, ladylike, little remarks or reminiscences.”

      Miss Forsyth looked at her calmly.

      “I always knew you were a goose,” she said, “but I never thought you quite such a goose. Don’t you see that if you take up that rôle, your people—Florence for certain, and even the others; one wouldn’t need to be very sharp in such a case—would see there was mischief brewing, especially if you kept me at a distance, and the whole thing would collapse.”

      “I don’t know, in the first place, what ‘the whole thing’ is,” said Trixie, sulkily. “But if I’m not to do as I propose, what am I to do? Remember, I must behave decently, or father will be down on me in hot earnest. There’s a limit to his patience, especially if he began to think I had been humbugging him this morning.”

      “Of course you must behave decently, and more than decently,” said Mabella. “You must look rather snubbed, if you can manage it; and if I tease you a little, you must bear it in a good-girl sort of way, as if you were turning over a new leaf, and it was too bad of me to make it harder for you. Oh, I could do it to perfection! I only wish I could be you and myself too.”

      “But I don’t see that that style of thing will attract Miss What’s-her-name to me,” objected Trixie.

      “Oh, you can come round her if you try. Confide in her that you’ve been very self-willed, and wild, and rackety, but that you see the error of your ways, and would like to make a friend of her. I’ll give you a helping hand when I can. I’ll hint that Florence is rather down on you—that you’re not a bad sort after all. You can take them all in if you like. Major Winchester will be quite hoodwinked—it will be delicious.”

      Trixie’s face cleared.

      “I must say you’re not a bad ally, Mab, when you give your mind to it,” she said. “But I wish I knew what it is you’re planning.”

      “Wait a bit,” said Miss Forsyth. “It’s first-rate—I can tell you that much.”

Chapter Three.

       Table of Contents

      A Friend in Need.

      It is sometimes almost worse to arrive too soon than too late. In the latter case you have at least the certainty of being expected, and even if people are cross and irritated at having been kept waiting, still your place is there for you; there is no question about it. Above all, if the case be that of arriving on a first visit, I for one should prefer the risk of the disagreeables attending a tardy appearance to the far from improbable humiliations consequent upon turning up prematurely. Not to speak of the positive inconveniences of no carriage at the station, or no room for you in the one that may have come to fetch some other guest by the previous train to your orthodox one, there is the blank look on your hostess’s face—“more for luncheon” it seems to say; and the extraordinarily uncomfortable announcement that your room is not quite ready—will be so directly, but “the So-and-so’s only left this morning, and the house has been so full;” and a sense of outraged and scurrying housemaids when it is suggested that you should just “leave your wraps in the dressing-room till after luncheon.” The visit must develop into something extraordinarily agreeable which succeeds in entirely living down the annoying contrariety of such a début.

      It was unfortunate, most unfortunate, that the Wentworths’ visit to Grey Fells Hall should have been inaugurated in this uncomfortable way. They were not expected at Cobbolds, the small station five miles off, but the nearest, nevertheless, till four in the afternoon, whereas it was barely twelve o’clock when they found themselves, their boxes and their bewildered attendant stranded on the platform in a drizzling rain and biting north-country wind, absolutely at a loss what to do and whither to betake themselves. How had they managed it? you may well ask, for the journey from London to Cloughshire is a matter of some six or seven hours even by express train, and the travellers had not started in the middle of the night. This was what had happened. In an evil moment some mischievous imp had suggested to Mrs. Wentworth the expediency of “breaking the journey” seven-eighths of the way, or thereabouts, at a country town where a cousin of hers was the wife of the vicar.

      “They will be so delighted to see us,” she said to Imogen, when Imogen, not unnaturally, demurred.

      “But I don’t want to see them; not the very least bit in the world, mamma,” she said. “It will be such a nuisance to undo our things for one night when they’re all nicely packed, and my new frocks will be so crushed—two days instead of one. And very likely we’ll get into the wrong train or something, the next morning, just when Mrs. Helmont has told us exactly what time to leave London, and all about it.”

      But in Mrs. Wentworth, for all her gentleness—and it was genuine, not superficial—there was a curious touch of obstinacy;