The party was diminished, but still it was a large party. The dining-room at Bellendean was a long room lighted by a line of windows at one side in deep recesses, for the house was of antique depth and strength. The walls were hung with family portraits, a succession of large and imposing individuals, whose presence in uniform or in robes of law, contemplating seriously the doings of their successors, added dignity to the house, but did not do much to brighten or beautify the interior, save in the case of a few smaller portraits, which were from the delightful hand of Raeburn, and made a sunshine in a shady place. The long table, with its daylight whiteness and brightness, concentrated the light, however, and made the ornaments of the walls of less importance; and the cheerful crowd was too much occupied with its own affairs to notice the nervousness of the newcomer, the Colonel’s wife, who had only made a brief appearance at breakfast to some of them, and attracted as little warmth of interest as a woman of her age generally does. She sat near Mr. Bellendean at the foot of the table, but as he was one of the men to whom it is necessary to a woman to be young and pretty, Mrs. Hayward had full opportunity to compose and calm herself with little interference from her host. She was separated almost by the length of the table from her husband, and consequently was safe from his anxious observation; and in the bustle of the mid-day meal, and the murmur of talk around her, Mrs. Hayward found a sort of retirement for herself, and composed her mind. Her self-arguments ended in the ordinary fatalism with which people accept the inevitable. ‘If it must be, it must be,’ she said to herself. Perhaps it might not turn out so badly as she feared; that vision of the pupil-teacher, the perfectly well-behaved, well-instructed girl, who would make her life a burden, and destroy all the privacy and all the enjoyment of her home, was a terrible image: but the sight of so many cheerful faces gradually drove it away.
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‘Who was I, Uncle Bellendean? I was a Saxon court lady. I was in attendance upon Queen Margaret. But she was not queen then; she was only princess, and an exile, don’t you know? We had all been nearly drowned, driven up from the Firth by the wind in the east.’
‘And where were you exiled from? and what were you doing in the Firth?’ said Mr. Bellendean, who was not perhaps thinking much of what he said.
‘Well I am sure,’ said Greta, with her soft Scotch intonation, ‘I don’t very well know; but Joyce does. She will tell you all about it if you ask her.’
‘This Joyce is a very alarming person. I hear her name wherever I turn. She seems the universal authority. I thought she must be an old governess; but I hear she’s a very pretty girl,’ said young Essex, who was at Greta’s side.
‘Far the prettiest girl in the parish, or for miles round.’
‘Speak for yourself, Greta,’ said a good-natured, blunt-featured young woman beside her, with a laugh. ‘I have always set up myself as a professional beauty, and I don’t give in to Joyce—except in so far, of course, as concerns Shakespeare and the musical glasses, where she is beyond all rivalry.’
Sir Harry, who was as little open to the pleasantry of Mid-Lothian as the Scotch in general are supposed to be to English wit, stared a little at the young person who assumed this position. He thought it possible she might be ‘chaffing,’ but was by no means sure. And he had no doubt that she was plain. He was too polite, however, to show his perplexity. ‘Does she receive any male pupils?’ he asked. ‘My tastes are quite undeveloped: even Shakespeare I don’t know so well as I ought. One has to get up a play or two now and then for an exam.: and there’s “Hamlet,” etc., at the Lyceum of course.’
‘Joyce would never forgive you that “Hamlet,” etc.,’ said the plain young lady. ‘You need never hope after that to be pupil of hers.’
‘Why, what should I say? Irving has done a lot of them. Shylock and—and Romeo, don’t you know? You don’t expect me to have all the names ready. A middle-aged fellow had no business to try Romeo. Come, I know as much as that.’
‘They are all real people to Joyce,’ said Greta. ‘She is not like us, who only take up a book now and then. She lives among books: she thinks as much of Shakespeare as of Scotland. He is not only a poet, he is a—he is a—well, a kind of world,’ she said, blushing a little. ‘I don’t know what other word to use.
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’
‘You could not have used a better word,’ said Norman Bellendean. ‘I am not a very great reader, but I’ve found that up at a hill-station where one had neither books nor society. I think that was very well said.’
Norman looked with a friendly admiration at his little cousin, and she, with a half glance and blush of reply, looked at Mrs. Bellendean at the head of the table, who, on her side, looked at them both. There was a great deal more in this mutual communication than met the eye.
‘Decidedly,’ said Sir Harry; ‘no one is good enough for this society unless he has undergone a preliminary training at the hands of Miss Joyce.’
‘Don’t you think,’ said a new voice hurriedly, with a ring of impatience in it, ‘that to bandy about a young lady’s name like this is not—not—quite good taste? Probably she would dislike being talked about—and certainly her friends——’
The young people turned in consternation to the quarter from which this utterance came. The Colonel’s wife had not hitherto attracted much attention. It had been settled that he was ‘an old darling:’ but Mrs. Hayward had not awakened the interest of these judg............