Cashel Byron's Profession

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.