Lady Alicia

“ Well, how's it to be, Alicia? Do we marry the baronet, and is poor Cousin Bob to be the best man at the wedding?"
"Sir Harry Towers is a noble-hearted young man," said Alicia, still trying to pass her cousin.
"But do we accept him—yes or no? Are we to be Lady Towers, with a superb estate in Hertfordshire, summer quarters for our hunters, and a drag with outriders to drive us across to papa's place in Essex? Is it to be so, Alicia, or not?"
"What is that to you, Mr. Robert Audley?" cried Alicia, passionately. "What do you care what becomes of me, or whom I marry? ”

“ The Lady Alicia might be described as a becoming frock stuffed with sentiment. Through a pair of large blue eyes she drank in romance, and with the reddest and most undecided of lips she felt a vague desire to kiss something. At the end of the dance she managed by a series of little manœuvres to find herself standing close to his elbow. She sighed twice, but he still seemed absorbed in his thoughts. Then with a heroic effort she summed up her courage, and said in a low and rather shaky voice, “You—you—you are unha—appy.”
Mr Beveridge turned and looked down on her with great interest. ”

“ My lady's beaming smiles, my lady's winning words, my lady's radiant glances and bewitching graces had done their work of enchantment, and Sir Michael had grown to look upon his daughter as a somewhat wilful and capricious young person who had behaved with determined unkindness to the wife he loved.
Poor Alicia saw all this, and bore her burden as well as she could. It seemed very hard to be a handsome, gray-eyed heiress, with dogs and horses and servants at her command, and yet to be so much alone in the world as to know of not one friendly ear into which she might pour her sorrows. ”

“ He drew a long face, sighed twice, and looking tenderly into Lady Alicia’s blue eyes, began in a gentle, reminiscent voice, “My boyhood was troubled and unhappy: no kind words, no caresses. I was beaten by a cruel stepfather, ignored and insulted for my physical deformities by a heartless stepmother.”
He stopped to sigh again, and Lady Alicia, with a boldness that surprised herself, and a perspicacity that would have surprised her friends, asked, “How could they—I mean, were they both step?” ”

“ Poor Alicia had had many skirmishes with her cousin upon that particular temperament of his, which, while it enabled him to go through life with perfect content and tacit enjoyment, entirely precluded his feeling one spark of enthusiasm upon any subject whatever.
"As to his ever falling in love," thought the young lady sometimes, "the idea is preposterous. If all the divinities on earth were ranged before him, waiting for his sultanship to throw the handkerchief, he would only lift his eyebrows to the middle of his forehead, and tell them to scramble for it." ”

“ I can see nothing. Must I turn to the right or the left?” said the young lady, stretching out her hand to feel the brick wall.
“This way,” cried Kripá Dé in front; and Alicia could now dimly trace the steps before her. They were steep, narrow, and not in particularly good condition. Alicia had a vague consciousness of plenty of dust below and cobwebs above.
“How strange it is,” thought the lady, as she groped her upward way, “that people of high caste and easy means, living in a large, lofty house, should not care for comfort, cleanliness or light. ”

“ Few women, indeed, think, but most feel; now Lady Alicia did neither: nature had made her weak and indolent, and she had never been placed in circumstances either to create or call forth character. As an infant she had the richest of worked robes, and the finest of lace caps ”

“ Alicia will sit with you, if I am engaged. She will walk with you, if you wish to go out into the garden. I have no doubt it will be a little unpleasant," said Lady Caroline, with a slight, agreeable smile, "to be constantly under surveillance, and of course it will last only until we leave home next week; but in the meantime, my dear, unless you will give up your penchant for Mr. Brand, you must submit to be watched. You cannot be allowed to run off with messages to this man as if you were a milliner's girl or a servant maid: we manage these matters differently." ”

“ Nixon recommend that Oliver should go abroad for the winter?" asked Alicia, after a pause. She was sitting on the arm of a chair, her slender feet hanging, and the combination of her blue linen dress with the fiery gold of her hair reminded Lady Lucy of the evening in the Eaton Square drawing-room, when she had first entertained the idea that Alicia and Oliver might marry. Oliver, standing erect in front of the fire looking down upon Alicia in her blue tulle--his young vigor and distinction--the carriage of his handsome head--was she never to see that sight again--never? ”

“ Perhaps this thought flickered across Miss Alicia's mind among a number of other things. She had heard “dear papa” on Lady Mallowe, and, howsoever lacking in graces, the vicar of Rowcroft had not lacked an acrid shrewdness. Miss Alicia's sensitively self-accusing soul shrank before a hasty realization of the fact that if he had been present when the cards were brought up, he would, on glancing over them through his spectacles, have jerked out immediately: “What does the woman want? She's come to get something.” Miss Alicia wished she had not been so immediately beset by this mental vision. ”

“ Do you know, Alicia, that madness is more often transmitted from father to daughter, and from mother to daughter than from mother to son? Your cousin, Robert Audley, is a very handsome young man, and I believe, a very good-hearted young man, but he must be watched, Alicia, for he is mad! ”

“ Before the last of the young sportsmen departed, Sir Harry Towers demanded and obtained an interview with Miss Alicia Audley in the oak library—an interview in which considerable emotion was displayed by the stalwart young fox-hunter; so much emotion, indeed, and of such a genuine and honest character, that Alicia fairly broke down as she told him she should forever esteem and respect him for his true and noble heart, but that he must never, never, unless he wished to cause her the most cruel distress, ask more from her than this esteem and respect. ”

“ My dear Alicia, of what a mistake were you guilty in marrying a man of his age! just old enough to be formal, ungovernable, and to have the gout; too old to be agreeable, too young to die. I arrived last night about five, had scarcely swallowed my dinner when Mainwaring made his appearance. I will not dissemble what real pleasure his sight afforded me, nor how strongly I felt the contrast between his person and manners and those of Reginald, to the infinite disadvantage of the latter. ”

“ Lady Alicia was summoned from a little paper poodle, on whose white curls she had been bestowing peculiar pains, by the drawing-room doors being thrown open with even more than their usual solemnity, and she was informed, by his own man, that his lordship requested her presence in the library: the surprise was sufficiently great to make her cut off her little dog's tail.
The ex-minister was too important a person to be kept waiting, at least in his own family ”

“ Alicia Audley and her pretty stepmother were by no means any better friends after that quiet evening on which the young barrister had dined at the Court.
"She is a vain, frivolous, heartless little coquette," said Alicia, addressing herself to her Newfoundland dog Caesar, who was the sole recipient of the young lady's confidences; "she is a practiced and consummate flirt, Caesar; and not contented with setting her yellow ringlets and her silly giggle at half the men in Essex, she must needs make that stupid cousin of mine dance attendance upon her. ”

“ Strange to say, George Talboys, who very seldom observed anything, took particular notice of this place.
"It ought to be an avenue in a churchyard," he said. "How peacefully the dead might sleep under this somber shade! I wish the churchyard at Ventnor was like this."
They walked on to the ruined well; and Alicia told them some old legend connected with the spot—some gloomy story, such as those always attached to an old house, as if the past were one dark page of sorrow and crime.
"We want to see the house before it is dark, Alicia," said Robert. ”

“ You are already an achieved effect—a consummation of the exquisite in every way. Generations have been chosen among for you; your person holds the inheritance of all that is gracious and tender and discriminating in a hundred years. You are as rare as I am, and if there is anything you would take from me, I would make more than one exchange for the mere niceness of your fibre—the feeling you have for fine shades of morality and taste—all that makes you a lady, my dear."
"Such niminy piminy things," said Alicia, contradicting the light of satisfaction in her eyes. ”

“ To Alicia’s disappointment Premi was not amongst them. So little interest was shown in the lady, that Alicia resolved not to visit a zenana again on consecutive days. The bibis’ stock of questions had been exhausted, half of them had been misunderstood or unanswered; the white lady’s dress was the same which she had worn on preceding days, and she was not likely to have anything to communicate but what the Hindus did not care to hear. Sometimes disappointment is experienced by workers when the hearers who crowded round them on their first appearance dwindle away as visits are repeated. ”

“ She was one of the very few girls who were present, for most of the young people were in the garden; but she had insisted on coming in to hear Janetta's song. She did not care about playing tennis; it made her hot, and ruffled her pretty Paris gown, which was not suitable for violent exertion of any kind; she left violent exertion to Alicia Stone, who was always ready to join in other people's amusements. Lady Caroline was not present; her neuralgia was troublesome, and she had every confidence in Alicia's chaperonage and Margaret's discretion. ”

“ Neither cared to pretend that Lady Eynesford would approve of such a visit.
"Oh, I slipped out," said Alicia, nestling beside her friend. "Poor child! What things you have been through! Still—you have Mr. Norburn."
"Yes; with him and father I really don't mind." She paused, and then there slipped out, in lower tone, a tell-tale "Much."
Alicia answered it with a caress.
"How brave you are!" she said. "Does—does he mind?"
"Mr. Norburn?"
"I meant your father." [Pg 264]
"He has no time to mind now. We are fighting," said Daisy.
"Ah, a man can fight, can't he?" ”

“ Alicia disturbed it with the necessity of taking Colonel Cummins place, which Lady Dolly accepted with admirable spirit; assuring the usurper, with the most engaging candour, that she simply ought never to be seen without turquoises. “Believe it or not as you like, but I love you better every time I see you in that necklace.” Lady Dolly clasped her hands, with her fan in them, in the abandonment of her affection, and “love you better” floated back and dispersed itself among the men. Alicia smiled the necessary acknowledgment. All the women she knew made compliments to her ”

“ Alicia looked at it all with glowing cheeks. She reflected that she had really spent the last check she had made her father give her to very great Advantage. There were very few people of her acquaintance, girls or married women, who knew how to get as much out of money as she did.
In her mind she ran over the list of guests invited to the Eastham party, as her new friend Lady Evelyn had confided it to her. Nothing could be smarter, but the competition among the women would be terribly keen. ”

“ And they’re not; and it’s natural. But I’ve got to get in my fine work, or my year’ll be over before I’ve ‘found out for myself,’ as Ann called it. There’s where I’m at, Miss Alicia—and I’ve been thinking of Lady Joan and her mother. You said you thought they’d come and stay here if they were properly asked.”
“I think they would,” answered Miss Alicia with her usual delicacy. [Pg 416] “I thought I gathered from Lady Mallowe that, as she was to be in the neighborhood, she would like to see you and Temple Barholm, which she greatly admires.” ”

“ She sat in the full glow of the fire now, and held her head proudly erect. There was no sign of tremor about her; her long, slender hands, tightly clasped, lay under a fold of her somber dress.
“But, Alicia, I know it. I don't deserve you—I can't—can't make you happy—oh, can't you see? Won't you—”
“I can't—see—what you mean.”
“You make me say it. Forgive me—Alicia. I love someone else.”
He was standing at a distance from her, not looking, not daring to look, at her. Into the silence fell the oddest sound—a little laugh.
“Oh, George! you know—it happens so often!” ”

“ The Hindus looked surprised at the question, which betrayed such ignorance of what they thought that every one knew or ought to know.
“Premi is a widow: of course she fasts every fortnight,” said Chand Kor; and so, as if tired with conversation on so insignificant a subject, she asked Alicia to sing.
Alicia was in no mood for singing; she rose and made her excuses as well as she could for not lingering longer in the zenana. “The sun is hot; my head pains me,” she said, in reply to the women’s expostulations. ”

“ Laura, sweet and grave-faced like her mother, is never as hilarious as the rest of us often are. My nephew Randolph was also absent. He, I suppose, was dining at his eternal "frat house."
It occurred to me how happy we could be, just the three of us, Alicia, Jimmie and I—plus, of course, Griselda. Alicia is beautiful now with a tender coloring and movements of exuberant gayety that are like wine to the heart. When her face is animated and her eyes flashing with merriment, the house seems charged with the very elixir of delight. ”