Cashel Byron's Profession

"We shall have time to run through all the follies of the season

before June, when I hope to return here and set to work at a book I

have planned. I must collect the material for it in London. If I

leave town before the season is over, and you are unwilling to come

away with me, I can easily find some one who will take care of you

as long as you please to stay. I wish it were June already!"

Alice preferred Lydia's womanly impatience to her fatalistic calm.

It relieved her sense of inferiority, which familiarity had

increased rather than diminished. Yet she was beginning to persuade

herself, with some success, that the propriety of Lydia's manners

was at least questionable. That morning Miss Carew had not scrupled

to ask a man what his profession was; and this, at least, Alice

congratulated herself on being too well-bred to do. She had quite

lost her awe of the servants, and had begun to address them with an

unconscious haughtiness and a conscious politeness that were making

the word "upstart" common in the servants' hall. Bashville, the

footman, had risked his popularity there by opining that Miss Goff

was a fine young woman.

Bashville was in his twenty-fourth year, and stood five feet ten in

his stockings. At the sign of the Green Man in the village he was

known as a fluent orator and keen political debater. In the stables

he was deferred to as an authority on sporting affairs, and an

expert wrestler in the Cornish fashion. The women servants regarded

him with undissembled admiration. They vied with one another in

inventing expressions of delight when he recited before them, which,

as he had a good memory and was fond of poetry, he often did. They

were proud to go out walking with him. But his attentions never gave

rise to jealousy; for it was an open secret in the servants' hall

that he loved his mistress. He had never said anything to that

effect, and no one dared allude to it in his presence, much less

rally him on his weakness; but his passion was well known for all

that, and it seemed by no means so hopeless to the younger members

of the domestic staff as it did to the cook, the butler, and

Bashville himself. Miss Carew, who knew the value of good servants,

appreciated her footman's smartness, and paid him accordingly; but

she had no suspicion that she was waited on by a versatile young

student of poetry and public affairs, distinguished for his

gallantry, his personal prowess, his eloquence, and his influence on

local politics.