Lady Dudgeon

“ Jacob having been considerably bruised and knocked about in his struggle with the ponies, Lady Dudgeon could do no less than call several times at Bridgeley to inquire after his health. There it was that she first saw Eleanor, at that time a flaxen-haired, blue-eyed child of eight, in short frocks and pinafores. She drew the child to her, looked her fixedly in the face for a moment or two, and then stooped and kissed her. Impulsive Nelly at once flung her arms round Lady Dudgeon's neck. "You are pretty, and I do love you!" she cried; and from that moment her ladyship's heart was won. ”

“ Sometimes he even turned over the music for Eleanor when she played after dinner; but had Lady Dudgeon been the most Argus-eyed of dowagers, instead of the most unsuspicious, she could not possibly have found fault with his demeanour on such occasions. He was Sir Thomas Dudgeon's secretary--and nothing more.
Eleanor had received his confession in a spirit somewhat different from what he had expected. He had thought that her pride would be more deeply wounded by the deception he had practised on her than it appeared to be. That it was wounded, he knew full well ”

“ Lloyd, as your ladyship may remember," resumed Olive, without heeding the interruption, "died very suddenly, and without making a will. This young lady,"--indicating Eleanor by a slight inclination of the head--"has, consequently, no claim whatever to a single sixpence of Mr. Lloyd's property. She is, in fact, neither more nor less than a pauper."
At this word a little cry burst involuntarily from Eleanor. She ran to Lady Dudgeon, and sinking on one knee, buried her face in the elder lady's lap.
"Miss Deane, you forget yourself!" said Lady Dudgeon, with severity. ”

“ Had she been a man, Lady Dudgeon would infallibly have developed into a Justice of the Peace, and as such have been a terror to all the evil-doers of the neighbourhood. With two exceptions, everybody at Stammars, her husband included, stood in awe of her. Those exceptions were her eldest daughter, Sophia, aged thirteen; and Eleanor Lloyd.
Lady Dudgeon had only two children living--the aforesaid Sophia, and Caroline, who was two years younger than her sister. For their behoof it was that an engagement had been entered into with Olive Deane. ”

“ Love to me is existence itself--for what is life without love?"
"What a dreadful person! We might all have been murdered in our beds!" said Lady Dudgeon in a loud aside, as she felt in her pocket for her smelling-salts.
"Matthew!" said Olive, passionately, advancing a step nearer her cousin, "you have bid me begone, and I know that there is nothing left for me but to obey. All is over between us. I played for a heavy stake, and I have lost it. I leave you now, never to see you again. I go forth into the world--whither, I neither know nor care. ”

“ Lady Dudgeon took a sniff at her salts before she spoke. "My dear Eleanor," she said at last, "if all people of wealth and social standing held the same terrible notions that you do, we should have chaos back again in a very little while. Your mind has been badly trained, child, and we must endeavour to eradicate the noxious weeds one by one. ”

“ But be careful that you do not fall into the hands of some swindling adventurer--of some romantic rogue, with a handsome face and a wheedling tongue, who, while persuading you that he loves you for yourself alone, cares, in reality, for nothing but the money you will bring him. The world abounds with such men. Be warned, or you may have to repent when repentance will be of no avail."
"Ah, Lady Dudgeon if I were not an heiress, what a happy girl I should be!" ”

“ Kelvin, in fact, had been altogether mistaken with regard to the reasons which had induced Olive to accept the situation of governess to Lady Dudgeon's children. Olive had no option but to accept it--or felt that she had not. When Lady Dudgeon made her the offer, and when her aunt said, "It would be a capital situation for you, and were I you I should certainly accept it," Olive felt that she was not at liberty to do otherwise--not at liberty to live an idle life any longer. ”

“ Lady Dudgeon, released at length from further attendance on her sick sister, was panting to get back to London for the remainder of the season. Sir Thomas, accompanied by his faithful Gerald, had come down on the Friday to fetch her ladyship. They were to stay at Stammars over the week end, but on the Monday morning the whole family would go up to town.
In due course. Miss Deane arrived at Stammars, only to find that Lady Dudgeon, accompanied by Miss Lloyd, had gone shopping to Pembridge, and that she must have passed them somewhere on the road. ”

“ Lady Dudgeon strove her hardest to hide from Olive the effect which her words had upon her. "Well, well, young people will be young people till the end of the chapter," she said at last, with a ghastly attempt at cheerfulness. ”

“ It need hardly be said that Eleanor stands higher in the favour of Lady Dudgeon than ever she did before. If she is penniless herself, has she not a husband who is worth twenty thousand pounds? Her ladyship could afford to condone much in face of such a golden fact as that. Not that there is anything to condone in the case of Eleanor, as matters have turned out; but had it unhappily been the case that Gerald was not his uncle's heir, it may be feared that Eleanor's offences would have been altogether past condonation. ”

“ The fame denied to her during her lifetime would be hers after death. After this fashion it was that Lady Dudgeon fed her imagination: and yet there were not wanting people who denied her the possession of any such commodity, and who mentally catalogued her as one of the most prosaic and commonplace of her sex.
"I hope you have not forgotten our conversation in my cousin's office at Pembridge?" said Olive suddenly to Jack, as she shut down the lid of the box and put her own two particular volumes under her arm, preparatory to leaving the room. ”

“ The likes and dislikes of young ladies are among the unaccountable things of this world. But I cannot help saying that your point-blank refusal even to see Captain Dayrell is a great disappointment to me."
"Do not say that, dear Lady Dudgeon!" cried Eleanor, and with that she took the elder lady's hand in hers, pressed it to her lips, and then nestled down on the little footstool by her knees. "Believe me, I am not ungrateful, not insensible to the kindness which prompted you to take an obscure country girl by the hand, and treat her more as a daughter of your own than anything else. ”

“ She had caught herself thinking about him several times: daydreaming, Lady Dudgeon called it. And why should she not think about him? she asked herself. He interested her. There was about him something different from anyone she had ever met before. If only she could have assisted him to get into Parliament, how happy that would have made her! Despite his careless, easy way of talking, she felt sure that he was ambitious. But with only a hundred and fifty pounds a year, and no friends to push him forward, a man's ambitious dreams must perforce be buried in his heart. ”

“ Lady Dudgeon sent some breakfast upstairs, and, by-and-by, she made her appearance in person. She wanted to satisfy herself that there was nothing seriously the matter with Miss Lloyd. It was but a simple headache, Eleanor informed her.
"But you are slightly feverish, child," persisted her ladyship; "and you look as if you had not had enough sleep."
Which statement was true enough. Some sensible young ladies there are whose healthy slumbers not even the imprint of Love's first kiss upon their lips has the slightest power to disturb ”

“ Then she went on, speaking more slowly and deliberately than before, so that each word might go home to her hearers, and with her eyes still fixed on Lady Dudgeon.
"It is a document which would seem to prove conclusively that the young lady hitherto known as Miss Eleanor Lloyd was not the daughter of the late Mr. Jacob Lloyd--nor indeed any relative of his whatever, but simply the child of some unknown parents, adopted by Mr. Lloyd and his wife out of charity or compassion." ”

“ What Sophia had just stated she had hitherto fondly believed to be a secret known to her husband and her maid alone.
"You naughty, vile girl," she stammered out. "I will send you right away from home to a school on the Continent, and you shall not come back any more until you are quite grown up."
"All right, mamma; I'll go," said the undaunted girl; "but I'll write to everybody by post and tell them about the wig and the teeth;" and, as Lady Dudgeon knew, her daughter was just the girl to carry out the threat. Her ladyship was puzzled. ”

“ A few days later Madame Ribaud received a month's notice, and Lady Dudgeon never attempted extreme measures with Sophia after that time.
It is not improbable that she had this very incident in her mind during her first interview with Miss Deane after the latter's arrival at Stammars. "I place them entirely in your hands," said her ladyship, in reference to her two girls. "Exercise whatever discipline over them you may think best, only don't box their ears, and don't trouble me. ”

“ Had there been any doubt in the matter, I should not have been here to-day."
"Oh, Lady Dudgeon, it is not that I fear poverty!" cried Eleanor. "Don't think that. You know that I have never really valued the riches that were said to be mine."
"That's true enough," murmured her ladyship.
"It is the thought of having lost the dearest and kindest man that ever breathed that wrings my heart. I have lost--my father!"
"Hush, my dear--hush! Even if it should turn out that you are not Mr. ”

“ Lady Emily was the daughter of a Duke, and had none of the aspirations of a climber, her family having climbed so long ago, that any little beatings about a modern ladder seemed ridiculous. Her brother was the present duke of course, and "made laws in London," as Miss Grace used to describe it. This phantom of a duke, intermarried in a way into her family, had prevented Mrs. Dudgeon from knowing any of the Ridgetown people--intimately that is. Yet the duke never called, and Lady Emily wore her dull coat of reserve when in Mrs. Dudgeon's company. ”

“ I mildly protested my wish to live and die where I lay; but they carried me up somewhere, and they put me to bed, and they gave me hot drinks, and I fell into, not a sleep, but a trance, that lasted twenty-odd hours.
“Faix! they had a narrow escape of it,” were the first intelligible words I heard on awaking. “They were only just married and druv off when old Dan Dudgeon came up, driving like mad. He was foaming with passion, and said if he went to the gallows for it, he 'd shoot the rascal that abused his hospitality and stole his daughter. The lady left this note for your honor.” ”

“ Another dance, which reminded me of the round dances of our country, consists in a lady and gentleman whirling rapidly round the hall, their hands just touching and their bodies gliding gracefully, now above, now below one another. Sometimes the whole company would thus form into couples, and keep on gyrating round the room as long as the music played. ”

“ I, Parravicini Leopold, have no fear that the law can question anything I have done."
"Take the girl away, and let me hear no more of her," cried Lady Ducayne, in the thin, old voice, which so poorly matched the energy and fire of the wicked old brain that guided its utterances. "Let her go back to her mother—I want no more girls to die in my service. There are girls enough and to spare in the world, God knows."
"If you ever engage another companion—or take another English girl into your service, Lady Ducayne, I will make all England ring with the story of your wickedness." ”

“ I broke into that animated and appropriate air, clapped my arm about Dudgeon's waist, and away down the hill at a dancing step! He hung back a little at the start, but the impulse of the tune, the night, and my example, were not to be resisted. A man made of putty must have danced, and even Dudgeon showed himself to be a human being. ”

“ It was she who ought to pay such acts of homage, not Julie.
"Father, Miss Le Breton is here."
"Let her come in, Jack--and the Duchess, too."
Lord Uredale went back to the door. Two figures came noiselessly into the room, the Duchess in front, with Julie's hand in hers.
Lord Lackington was propped up in bed, and breathing fast. But he smiled as they approached him.
"This is good-bye, dear Duchess," he said, in a whisper, as she bent over him. Then, with a spark of his old gayety in the eyes, "I should be a cur to grumble. Life has been very agreeable. Ah, Julie!" ”

“ If you tired out Lady Dudley, who is a very distinguished woman, I, who have not her passionate desires, should, I fear, turn coldly against you even sooner than she did. Come, let us suppress love between us, inasmuch as you can find happiness only with the dead, and let us be merely friends—I wish it. Ah! my dear count, what a history you have told me! At your entrance into life you found an adorable woman, a perfect mistress, who thought of your future, made you a peer, loved you to distraction, only asked that you would be faithful to her, and you killed her! I know nothing more monstrous. ”

“ What a hell some women—good women—might have made of Dudley's life—that genial life that flowed as smoothly as a song. In the flights and pauses of his temperament what discord might have shocked the decent measure of their marriage? ”