Miss Fishguard was not unnaturally startled by this remark. “I?” she echoed. “But, my love—!”
“Oh, yes, of course, to be sure!” said Kitty, recollecting herself. “The—the thing is, it seems strange to me just at first!”
Miss Fishguard could readily understand this. She pressed Kitty’s hand in a speaking manner: “A change in your circumstance, dear, but a natural one.”
Kitty gave an involuntary gurgle. “Well, I must own it doesn’t seem a natural thing to me to be engaged to marry Freddy!” she said frankly.
Miss Fishguard forbore to reprove her for this outburst of candour. She said: “A very eligible connection! He has a thousand amiable qualities—most distinguished manners, I am sure! Most truly the gentleman! But, oh, my love, when Stobhill dropped a hint in my ear—so very improper, but one scarcely liked to give him a set-down, for I daresay he meant it for the best!—I declare I felt ready to drop! Pardon me, my dear Kitty, if I am presumptuous enough to say that I had not the remotest guess—never expected—in short, was amazed almost into a spasm! I do not pretend to any extraordinary quickness in these matters: it has never appeared to me that dear Mr. Frederick had grown particular in his attentions!”
“No,” agreed Kitty, reflecting that since of all Mr. Penicuik’s relations Mr. Standen had been of late years the most infrequent visitor to Arnside, no one could wonder at Miss Fishguard’s surprise.
“In another, I might almost have supposed this event to have been occasioned by pecuniary considerations,” confessed Miss Fishguard. “I hasten, however, to assure you, my love, that in connection with Mr. Frederick such a suspicion has only to occur to one to be banished! I am persuaded that he has too much delicacy of mind and sensibility of heart ever to be swayed by mercenary impulses! Besides,” she added, “I cannot but be aware that he was born to the comfort of a handsome fortune.”
“I must say, I do hope that others besides you will think that,” remarked Kitty thoughtfully. “I quite see that it would be very disagreeable for poor Freddy to be supposed to have offered for me only to acquire Uncle Matthew’s money.”
“So ignoble a thought,” declared Miss Fishguard, “will not for an instant be permitted to obtrude!”
“I own, I cannot imagine how it should,” agreed Kitty, hugging her knees, and looking, with one curl escaping from beneath her cap, and a bow tied at a skittish angle under her chin, absurdly youthful. “But he seemed to think it would. Oh, well! very likely he quite mistakes the matter, for he is the most foolish creature!” She realized that she had shocked her governess, and added hastily: “I mean—I mean—he takes odd notions into his head!”
“Kitty!” said Miss Fishguard, her voice sinking a tone, and her cheeks suffused with colour, “can it be that you have mistaken your heart?”
Kitty made haste to assure her that she had not. Miss Fishguard, her fingers writhing together, and her eyes cast upwards, said tremulously: “Let one whose vernal hopes were blighted by the ambition of a parent assure you that ‘love will still be lord of all!’ Dear Kitty, do not, I implore you, be seduced by thoughts of worldly advancement!”
“No, no, I promise you I will not!” Kitty said. “But— but what were your vernal hopes, dear Fish?”
“Alas!” sighed Miss Fishguard. “His situation was inferior, and although I must always hold to the belief that his character was respectable, I could not but acquiesce in my dear father’s decision that it might not be.” She met Miss Charing’s enquiring gaze, and sank her head, saying in a stricken under-voice: “He was the apothecary’s assistant. He was a very handsome young man, my dear, and looked quite the gentleman. I can see him now, putting up the pills which poor papa was forced to take to alleviate the pangs of indigestion. But of course it would not do!”
“Of course not,” said Kitty, over-awed by the mental vision of Miss Fishguard in the throes of love for an apothecary’s assistant.
“For my revered papa, as I need scarcely remind you,” said Miss Fishguard, “was, like Mr. Rattray, in Holy Orders.”
This name aroused Kitty from her reverie, and she said with a good deal of feeling: “Do not speak to me of Hugh, I beg of you! Only fancy, Fish! He would have me believe he offered for me out of pity!”
Miss Fishguard, who was at once afraid of the Rector and resentful of his efforts to prevail upon Mr. Penicuik to replace her with a governess able to instruct Kitty in the Italian tongue, clicked her tongue, and shook her head, saying that she feared Mr. Rattray was guilty of dissimulation. “I do not know how it is, my love,” she said impressively, “but although he is excessively handsome I can never bring myself to trust him! His manners are reserved, and although I am sure I hope he may be a man of rectitude, one cannot but reflect that instances have been known when outward piety has served but as a cloak for—well, consider Schedoni, dearest Kitty!”
But the thought of a comparison’s being drawn between Hugh Rattray and the villainous monk in Mrs. Radclyffe’s popular romance set Kitty off into such a fit of giggling that Miss Fishguard became offended, and was with difficulty mollified. Indeed, only her desire to discover what circumstance it had been that had impelled Mr. Standen so suddenly to declare himself kept her seated still beside Kitty’s bed. Feeling that she could not improve upon the words she had spoken in the Saloon, for the benefit of her other suitors, Kitty repeated them. Miss Fishguard was at once affected by the thought of the pangs endured by Freddy while concealing his hopeless passion for Miss Charing. She was put so much in mind of all her favourite heroes that for several minutes she forgot what she could not but consider to be the superior claims of Mr. Westruther. But these presently recurred to her memory, and she ventured to enquire whether tidings had yet been received of this gentleman.
“Dear me, no!” replied Kitty airily. “I assure you, I do not expect to see him at Arnside on this occasion!”
Miss Fishguard sighed. “How often one may be deceived in one’s fellow-creatures!” she observed. “When Mr. Penicuik was so obliging as to make known to me his intentions, I must own it was Mr. Jack whom I expected to see at Arnside, ahead of all!”
“I had no such expectation!” said Kitty. “Nor had I the smallest wish to see him here.”
Miss Fishguard looked timidly at her, for she sounded rather fierce. Encountering a dangerous sparkle in those big eyes, which met hers full, she said doubtfully: “I have sometimes wondered, my love . . .”
“You have wondered what, dear Fish?” prompted Kitty, with deceptive sweetness.
“Only that—Such a very handsome man, and of the first style of elegance! Air and address everything that they should be!” faltered Miss Fishguard. “And one cannot but recollect that it is he who has been most often at Arnside, after all!”
“Certainly, for he is quite Uncle Matthew’s favourite!” responded Kitty swiftly. “As for the rest, I believe that he is a very dashing blade, as Freddy would say! My dear Fish, has he added you to his many conquests? The most shocking flirt in town, I am persuaded! He does very well for—for one’s entertainment, but the female who receives his advances seriously will be destined, I fear, to sad disappointment! But do not let us be talking about such a rattle! The thing is, Fish, that Freddy is very desirous of presenting me to his parents, and means to carry me off to London almost immediately.”
“But, Kitty, you are already acquainted with dear Lady Legerwood!” objected Miss Fishguard. “And with Lord Legerwood too, for now I come to think of it, he accompanied her ladyship to Arnside, on the occasion of—”