Arminell, a social romance. Baring-Gould Sabine

first Lady Lamerton. I never was in the house with her, but she often came and saw me. That was a bad day for many of us—not only for you, miss, but for all of us—when she died. If she had lived, I don't think we could have fallen into this trouble."

      "What trouble?" Arminell asked. She was touched by the reference to her mother, about whom she knew and was told so little.

      "I mean, miss, the mine that is being stopped. Her dear late ladyship would never have allowed it."

      "But it runs under the house."

      "Oh, miss, nothing of the sort. That is what Mr. Macduff says, because he is trying to persuade his lordship to close the mine. It is not for me to speak against him, but he is much under the management of Mrs. Macduff, who is a very fine lady; and because the miners don't ​salute her, she gives Macduff no rest, day or night, till he gets his lordship to disperse the men. My lord listens to him, and does not see who is speaking through his lips. My brother James is a comical-minded man, and he said one day that Mr. Macduff was like the automaton chess-player that was once exhibited in London. Every one thought the wax doll played, but there was a young girl hid in a compartment under the table, and she directed all the movements of the chess-player."

      "I really cannot interfere between my lord and his agent, or intercept communications between Mr. Chess-player and Mrs. Prompter."

      "Oh, no, miss; I never meant anything of the sort. I was only thinking how different it would have been for us if my lady—I mean my late lady—were here. She was a good friend to us. Oh, miss, I shall never forget when I was ill of the typhus, and everyone was afraid to come near us, how my good lady came here, carrying a sheet to the window, and tapped, and gave it in, because she thought we might be short of linen for my bed. I've never forgot that. I keep that sheet to this day, and I shall not part with it; it shall serve as my winding sheet. The dear good lady was so thoughtful for the poor. But times are changed. It is not for me to cast blame, or to say that my lady as now is, is not good, but there are different kinds of goodnesses as there are cabbage roses and Marshal Neils."

      Arminell was interested and touched.

      "You knew my dear mother well?"

      "I am but a humble person, and it is unbecoming of me to say it, though I have a brother who is a gentleman, who associates with the best in the land, and I am better born than you may suppose, seeing that I married a captain of a manganese mine. I beg pardon—I was saying that her ladyship almost made a friend of me, though I say it who ​ought not. Still, I had feelings and education above my station, and that perhaps led her to consult me when she came here to Orleigh and knew nothing of the place or of the people, and might have been imposed on, but for me. After I recovered of the scarlet fever——"

      "I thought it was typhus?"

      "It began scarlet and ended typhus. Those fevers, miss, as my brother James says in his droll way, are like tradesmen, they make jobs for each other, and hand on the patient."

      "How long was that after Mr. Jingles—I mean your son, Mr. Giles Saltren, was born?"

      "Oh,"—Mrs. Saltren looked about her rather vaguely—"not over long. Will you condescend to step indoors and see my little parlour, where I think, miss, you have never been yet, though it is scores and scores of times your dear mother came there."

      "I will come in," said Arminell readily. Her heart warmed to the woman who had been so valued by her mother.

      The house was tidy, dismal indeed, and small, but what made it most dismal was the strain after grandeur, the gay table-cover, the carpet with large pattern, the wall paper black with huge bunches of red and white roses on it, out of keeping with the dimensions of the room.

      Arminell looked round and felt a rising sense of the absurdity, the affectation, the incongruity, that at any other moment would have made her laugh inwardly, though too well-bred to give external sign that she ridiculed what she saw.

      "Ah, miss!" said Mrs. Saltren, "you're looking at that beautiful book on the table. My lady gave it me herself, and I value it, not because of what it contains, nor for the handsome binding, but because of her who gave it to me."

      Arminell took up the book and opened it.

      ​"But—" she said,—"the date. It is an annual, published three years after my mother's death."

      "Oh, I beg your pardon, miss, I did not say my late lady gave it me. I said, my lady. I know how to distinguish between them. If it had been given me by your dear mother, who is gone, my late lady, do you suppose it would be lying here? I would not keep it in the room where I sit but rarely, but have it in my bed-chamber, where I could fold my hands over it when I pray."

      "I should like," said Arminell, "to see the sheet that my poor dear mother gave you, and which you cherish so fondly, to wrap about you in the grave."

      "With pleasure," said Mrs. Saltren. "No—I won't say with pleasure, for it calls up sad recollections, and yet, miss, there is pleasure in thinking of the goodness of that dear lady who is gone. Lor! miss, it did seem dreadful that my dear lady when on earth didn't take precedency over the daughter of an earl, but now, in heaven, she ranks above marchionesses."

      Then she asked Arminell to take a chair, and went slowly upstairs to search for the sheet. While she was absent the girl looked round her, and now her lips curled with derision at the grotesque strain after refinement and luxury which were unattainable as a whole, and only reached in inharmonious scraps and disconnected patches.

      This was the home of Jingles! What a change for him, from these mean surroundings, this tasteless affectation, to the stateliness and smoothness of life at Orleigh Park! How keenly he must feel the contrast when he returned home! Had her father dealt rightly by the young man, in giving him culture beyond his position? It is said that a man has sat in an oven whilst a chop has been done, and has eaten the chop, without being himself roasted, but then the temperature of the oven was gradually raised and gradually lowered. Young Saltren had jumped into the ​oven out of a cellar and passed every now and then back again to the latter. This alteration of temperatures would kill him.

      Some time elapsed before Mrs. Saltren returned. She descended the stair slowly, sighing, with the sheet over her arm.

      "You need not fear to catch the fever from it, miss," she said, "it has been washed many times since it was used—with my tears."

      Arminell's heart was full. She took the sheet and looked at it. How good, how considerate her mother had been. And what a touch of real feeling this was in the faithful creature, to cherish the token of her mother's kindness.

      The young are sentimental, and are incapable of distinguishing true feeling from false rhodomontade.

      "Why!" exclaimed Arminell, "it has a mark in the corner S S,—does not that stand for your husband's initials?"

      The woman seemed a little taken aback, but soon recovered herself.

      "It may be so. But it comes about like this. I asked Stephen to mark the sheet with a double L. for Louisa, Lady Lamerton, and a coronet over, but he was so scrupulous, he said it might be supposed I had carried it away from the park, and that as the sheet was given to us, we'd have it marked as our own. My husband is as particular about his conscience as one must be with the bones in a herring. It was Bond's marking ink he used," said Mrs. Saltren, eager to give minute circumstances that might serve as confirmation of her story, "and there was a stretcher of wood, a sort of hoop, that strained the linen whilst it was being written on. If you have any doubt, miss, about my story, you've only to ask for a bottle of Bond's marking ink and you will see that they have circular stretchers—which is a proof that this is the identical sheet ​my lady gave me. Besides, there is a number under the letters."

      "Yes, seven."

      "That was my device. It rhymes with heaven, where my lady,—I mean my late lady—is now taking precedence even of marchionesses."

      Arminell said nothing. The woman's mind was like her parlour, full of incongruities.

      "Look about