So her stock of underclothing was very small, and scarcely any of it
new; but it was made of dainty material, and was finely mended up
by her deft fingers, many a night long after her pupils were in bed;
inwardly resolving all the time she sewed, that hereafter some one
else should do her plain-work. Indeed, many a little circumstance of
former subjection to the will of others rose up before her during
these quiet hours, as an endurance or a suffering never to occur
again. So apt are people to look forward to a different kind of life
from that to which they have been accustomed, as being free from care
and trial! She recollected how, one time during this very summer at
the Towers, after she was engaged to Mr. Gibson, when she had taken
above an hour to arrange her hair in some new mode carefully studied
from Mrs. Bradley's fashion-book--after all, when she came down,
looking her very best, as she thought, and ready for her lover, Lady
Cumnor had sent her back again to her room, just as if she had been
a little child, to do her hair over again, and not to make such a
figure of fun of herself! Another time she had been sent to change
her gown for one in her opinion far less becoming, but which suited
Lady Cumnor's taste better. These were little things; but they were
late samples of what in different shapes she had had to endure for
many years; and her liking for Mr. Gibson grew in proportion to her
sense of the evils from which he was going to serve as a means of
escape. After all, that interval of hope and plain-sewing, intermixed
though it was with tuition, was not disagreeable. Her wedding-dress
was secure. Her former pupils at the Towers were going to present her
with that; they were to dress her from head to foot on the auspicious
day. Lord Cumnor, as has been said, had given her a hundred pounds
for her trousseau, and had sent Mr. Preston a carte-blanche order for
the wedding-breakfast in the old hall in Ashcombe Manor-house. Lady
Cumnor--a little put out by the marriage not being deferred till
her grandchildren's Christmas holidays--had nevertheless given Mrs.
Kirkpatrick an excellent English-made watch and chain; more clumsy
but more serviceable than the little foreign elegance that had hung
at her side so long, and misled her so often.
Her preparations were thus in a very considerable state of
forwardness, while Mr. Gibson had done nothing as yet towards any new
arrangement or decoration of his house for his intended bride. He
knew he ought to do something. But what? Where to begin, when so much
was out of order, and he had so little time for superintendence?
At length he came to the wise decision of asking one of the Miss
Brownings, for old friendship's sake, to take the trouble of
preparing what was immediately requisite; and resolved to leave all
the more ornamental decorations that he proposed, to the taste of his
future wife. But before making his request to the Miss Brownings, he
had to tell them of his engagement, which had hitherto been kept a
secret from the townspeople, who had set down his frequent visits
at the Towers to the score of the countess's health. He felt how he
should have laughed in his sleeve at any middle-aged widower who
came to him with a confession of the kind he had now to make to Miss
Brownings, and disliked the idea of the necessary call: but it was to
be done, so one evening he went in "promiscuous," as they called it,
and told them his story. At the end of the first chapter--that is to
say, at the end of the story of Mr. Coxe's calf-love, Miss Browning
held up her hands in surprise.