Lydia resumed her work next day with shaken nerves and a longing for
society. Many enthusiastic young ladies of her acquaintance would
have brought her kisses and devotion by the next mail in response to
a telegram; and many more practical people would have taken
considerable pains to make themselves agreeable to her for the sake
of spending the autumn at Wiltstoken Castle. But she knew that they
would only cause her to regret her former solitude. She shrank from
the people who attached themselves to her strength and riches even
when they had not calculated her gain, and were conscious only of
admiration and gratitude. Alice, as a companion, had proved a
failure.
She was too young, and too much occupied with the propriety
of her own behavior, to be anything more to Lydia than an occasional
tax upon her patience. Lydia, to her own surprise, thought several
times of Miss Gisborne, and felt tempted to invite her, but was
restrained by mistrust of the impulse to communicate with Cashel's
mother, and reluctance to trace it to its source. Eventually she
resolved to conquer her loneliness, and apply herself with increased
diligence to the memoir of her father. To restore her nerves, she
walked for an hour every day in the neighborhood, and drove out in a
pony carriage, in the evening. Bashville's duties were now fulfilled
by the butler and Phoebe, Lydia being determined to admit no more
young footmen to her service.
One afternoon, returning from one of her daily walks, she found a
stranger on the castle terrace, in conversation with the butler. As
it was warm autumn weather, Lydia was surprised to see a woman
wearing a black silk mantle trimmed with fur, and heavily decorated
with spurious jet beads. However, as the female inhabitants of
Wiltstoken always approached Miss Carew in their best raiment,
without regard to hours or seasons, she concluded that she was about
to be asked for a subscription to a school treat, a temperance
festival, or perhaps a testimonial to one of the Wiltstoken curates.
When she came nearer she saw that the stranger was an elderly
lady--or possibly not a lady--with crimped hair, and ringlets
hanging at each ear in a fashion then long obsolete.
"Here is Miss Carew," said the butler, shortly, as if the old lady
had tried his temper. "You had better talk to her yourself."
At this she seemed fluttered, and made a solemn courtesy. Lydia,
noticing the courtesy and the curls, guessed that her visitor kept a
dancing academy. Yet a certain contradictory hardihood in her frame
and bearing suggested that perhaps she kept a tavern. However, as
her face was, on the whole, an anxious and a good face, and as her
attitude towards the lady of the castle was one of embarrassed
humility, Lydia acknowledged her salutation kindly, and waited for
her to speak.