The Frances Hodgson Burnett MEGAPACK ®. Frances Hodgson Burnett

to hearken further, wondering what she should do to best alarm the house, and, as she bent so, she heard the sound again and a smothered oath, and with her straining eyes saw that surely upon the path there stood a dark-draped figure. She rose with great care to her feet, and stood a moment shaking and clinging to the window-ledge, while she bethought her of what servants she could wake first, and how she could reach her father’s room. Her poor heart beat in her side, and her breath came quickly. The soundlessness of the night was broken by one of the strange sudden gusts of wind which tossed the trees, and tore at the clouds as they hurried. She heard the footsteps again, as if it feared its own sound the less when the wind might cover it. A faint pale gleam showed between two dark clouds behind which the moon had been hidden; it grew brighter, and a jagged rent was torn, so that the moon herself for a second or so shone out dazzling bright before the clouds rushed over her again and shut her in.

      It was at this very instant Mistress Anne heard the footsteps once more, and saw full well a figure in dark cloak and hat which stepped quickly into the shade of a great tree. But more she saw—and clapped her hand upon her mouth to stifle the cry that would have otherwise risen in spite of her—that notwithstanding his fair locks were thrust out of sight beneath his hat, and he looked strange and almost uncomely, it was the face of Sir John Oxon, the moon, bursting through the jagged clouds, had shone upon.

      CHAPTER VIII

      Two meet in the deserted rose garden, and the old Earl of Dunstanwolde is made a happy man

      It was not until three days later, instead of two, that Sir John Oxon rode into the courtyard with his servant behind him. He had been detained on his journey, but looked as if his impatience had not caused him to suffer, for he wore his finest air of spirit and beauty, and when he was alone with Sir Jeoffry, made his compliments to the absent ladies, and inquired of their health with his best town grace.

      Mistress Clorinda did not appear until the dining hour, when she swept into the room like a queen, followed by her sister, Anne, and Mistress Wimpole, this being the first occasion of Mistress Anne’s dining, as it were, in state with her family.

      The honour had so alarmed her, that she looked pale, and so ugly that Sir Jeoffry scowled at sight of her, and swore under his breath to Clorinda that she should have been allowed to come.

      “I know my own affairs the best, by your leave, sir,” answered Clorinda, as low and with a grand flash of her eye. “She hath been drilled well.”

      This she had indeed, and so had Mistress Wimpole, and throughout Sir John Oxon’s stay they were called upon to see that they played well their parts. Two weeks he stayed and then rode gaily back to town, and when Clorinda made her sweeping curtsey to the ground to him upon the threshold of the flowered room in which he bade her farewell, both Anne and Mistress Wimpole curtseyed a step behind her.

      “Now that he has gone and you have shown me that you can attend me as I wish,” she said, turning to them as the sound of his horse’s hoofs died away, “it will not trouble me should he choose some day to come again. He has not carried with him much that he can boast of.”

      In truth, it seemed to the outer world that she had held him well in hand. If he had come as a sighing lover, the whole county knew she had shown him but small favour. She had invited companies to the house on several occasions, and all could see how she bore herself towards him. She carried herself with a certain proud courtesy as becoming the daughter of his host, but her wit did not spare him, and sometimes when it was more than in common cutting he was seen to wince though he held himself gallantly. There were one or two who thought they now and then had seen his blue eyes fall upon her when he believed none were looking, and rest there burningly for a moment, but ’twas never for more than an instant, when he would rouse himself with a start and turn away.

      She had been for a month or two less given to passionate outbreaks, having indeed decided that it was to her interest as a young lady and a future great one to curb herself. Her tirewoman, Rebecca, had begun to dare to breathe more freely when she was engaged about her person, and had, in truth, spoken of her pleasanter fortune among her fellows in the servants’ hall.

      But a night or two after the visitor took his departure, she gave way to such an outburst as even Rebecca had scarce ever beheld, being roused to it by a small thing in one sense, though in yet another perhaps great enough, since it touched upon the despoiling of one of her beauties.

      She was at her toilet-table being prepared for the night, and her long hair brushed and dressed before retiring. Mistress Wimpole had come in to the chamber to do something at her bidding, and chancing to stand gazing at her great and heavy fall of locks as she was waiting, she observed a thing which caused her, foolish woman that she was, to give a start and utter an unwise exclamation.

      “Madam!” she gasped—“madam!”

      “What then!” quoth Mistress Clorinda angrily. “You bring my heart to my throat!”

      “Your hair!” stammered Wimpole, losing all her small wit—“your beauteous hair! A lock is gone, madam!”

      Clorinda started to her feet, and flung the great black mass over her white shoulder, that she might see it in the glass.

      “Gone!” she cried. “Where? How? What mean you? Ah-h!”

      Her voice rose to a sound that was well-nigh a scream. She saw the rifled spot—a place where a great lock had been severed jaggedly—and it must have been five feet long.

      She turned and sprang upon her woman, her beautiful face distorted with fury, and her eyes like flames of fire. She seized her by each shoulder and boxed her ears until her head spun round and bells rang within it.

      “’Twas you!” she shrieked. “’Twas you—she-devil-beast—slut that you are! ’Twas when you used your scissors to the new head you made for me. You set it on my hair that you might set a loop—and in your sluttish way you snipped a lock by accident and hid it from me.”

      She beat her till her own black hair flew about her like the mane of a fury; and having used her hands till they were tired, she took her brush from the table and beat her with that till the room echoed with the blows on the stout shoulders.

      “Mistress, ’twas not so!” cried the poor thing, sobbing and struggling. “’Twas not so, madam!”

      “Madam, you will kill the woman,” wept Mistress Wimpole. “I beseech you—! ’Tis not seemly, I beseech—”

      Mistress Clorinda flung her woman from her and threw the brush at Mistress Wimpole, crying at her with the lordly rage she had been wont to shriek with when she wore breeches.

      “Damnation to thy seemliness!” she cried, “and to thee too! Get thee gone—from me, both—get thee gone from my sight!”

      And both women fled weeping, and sobbing, and gasping from the room incontinently.

      She was shrewish and sullen with her woman for days after, and it was the poor creature’s labour to keep from her sight, when she dressed her head, the place from whence the lock had been taken. In the servants’ hall the woman vowed that it was not she who had cut it, that she had had no accident, though it was true she had used the scissors about her head, yet it was but in snipping a ribbon, and she had not touched a hair.

      “If she were another lady,” she said, “I should swear some gallant had robbed her of it; but, forsooth, she does not allow them to come near enough for such sport, and with five feet of hair wound up in coronals, how could a man unwind a lock, even if ’twas permitted him to stand at her very side.”

      Two years passed, and the beauty had no greater fields to conquer than those she found in the country, since her father, Sir Jeoffry, had not the money to take her to town, he becoming more and more involved and so fallen into debt that it was even whispered that 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,