Juliet disclaimed taking any share in his present munificence; yet owned that she had an ancient obligation to him that she was unable, at this moment, to repay; and which, from the delicacy with which it had been conferred, and the seasonable relief which it had procured her, would merit her lasting gratitude. He was brother-in-law, she added, to the lady with whom she had lately resided; and he was as rich as he was benevolent.
Her scruples, then, Gabriella said, were at an end. Juliet, therefore, begged that she would endeavour to enter into conversation with him concerning Brighthelmstone; and try to obtain some particulars relative to the party at Mrs Ireton's.
'I began to fear you had flown away, Ma'am,' said Sir Jaspar, upon Gabriella's re-entrance into the shop; 'and I was much less surprised than concerned; for I had already surmized that you were an angel; though I had failed to remark your wings.'
He then put into her hand three more pieces of ribbon, which he had chosen during her absence.
Gabriella, who understood English well, though she spoke it imperfectly, made her answers in French.
Having now given her ample employment, he sat down to examine, or, rather, to admire at his ease, the lightness and grace with which she executed her office; saying, 'You are not, perhaps, aware, Madam, that there are certain little beings, nameless and invisible, yet active and penetrating, perpetually hovering around us, who have let me a little into your history; and have taken upon them to assure me that you were not precisely brought up to be a shop-keeper? How, then, is it that you have jumbled thus together such heterogeneous materials of existence? leaguing high birth with low life? superiour rank with vulgar employment; and grace, taste, and politeness with common drudgery? How, in short, born and bred to be dangled after by your vassals, and to lollop, the live-long-day, upon sofas and arm-chairs, have you acquired the necessary ingredients for being metamorphosed into a tidy little haberdasher?'
Gabriella, concluding that her situation had been made known to him by Juliet, answered, in a melancholy tone,
'Is this a period, Sir, to consider punctilio? Alas! whence I come, all that are greatest, most ancient, and most noble,1 have learnt, that self-exertion can alone mark nobility of soul; and that self-dependence only can sustain honour in adversity. Alas, whence I come, the first youth is initiated in the view, if not in the endurance of misfortune! There can be no understanding, or there must be early reflection; there can be no heart, or there must be commiserating sympathy!'
'I protest, Ma'am,' cried Sir Jaspar, looking at her with astonishment, 'I begin to suspect that I came into the world only this morning! Where I may have been rambling, all these years, in the persuasion I was in it already, I have by no means any clear notion! But to see two such instances of wisdom and resignation, united with youth and beauty, makes me believe myself in some new region, never yet visited by vice or folly.'
'Ah, Sir, the French Revolution has opened our eyes to a species of equality more rational, because more feasible, than that of lands or of rank; an equality not alone of mental sufferings, but of manual exertions. No state of life, however low, or however hard, has been left untried, either by the highest, or by the most delicate, in the various dispersions and desolation of the ancient French nobility. And to see, – as I, alas! have seen, – the willing efforts, the even glad toil, of the remnants of the first families of Europe, to procure, – not luxuries, not elegancies, not even comforts, – but maintenance! mean, laborious maintenance! – to preserve, – not state, not fortune, not rank, – but life itself! but simple existence!' —
'Very wonderful personage!' cried Sir Jaspar, his air mingling reverence with amazement; 'and what, – unfold to me, I beg, what is the necromancy through which you support, under such toils, your intellectual dignity? and strangle, in its birth, every struggle of false shame?'
'Alas, Sir, I have seen guilt! – Since then, I have thought that shame belonged to nothing else!'
The eyes of Sir Jaspar were now suffused with tender admiration. 'Fair deity of the counter!' he cried, 'you are sublime! And she, too, – your witching little handmaid; by what kind, dulcet chance, – new in the annals of misfortune, – have two such wonders met? – '
'Ah, rather, Sir, – since you couple us so kindly, – rather ask by what adverse chance we have so long been separated?'
'You have known her, then, some time?'
'We were brought up together! – the same convent, the same governess, the same instructors, were common to both till my marriage. And now, again, – as before that period, – I have not the most distant idea of any possible happiness, that is not annexed to her presence.'
Touched to hear the word happiness once again, even though with such sadness, pronounced by Gabriella; yet alarmed at a discourse that might lead, inadvertently, to some secret history, Juliet was returning, to stop any further detail; when, upon Sir Jaspar's answering, 'Sweet couple! Lord Denmeath, who ought at least, if I understand right, – to take care of one of you will surely make it his business that you should coo together in the same cage?' – she again retreated, anxious to learn what this meant, and hoping that he would become more explicit.
'Lord Denmeath?' repeated Gabriella, 'If you know Lord Denmeath you may be better informed upon this subject than I am myself. Was it at Brighthelmstone that you met with his lordship?'
'It was at Brighthelmstone that I heard of him; and heard that, though wary of speech, he has been incautious in manner, and left little doubt upon the minds of his observers, that this fair flower springs from the same stock as some part of his own family; though she may be one of those sweet, but hapless buds, whose innocence pays for the guilt of its planter. – '
'No, Sir, no!' Gabriella precipitately interrupted him; 'the birth of my friend is unstained, though unequal; the marriage of her parents was legal, though secret. Her mother came not, indeed, from an ancient race; but she was a pattern of virtue, as well as a model of beauty. Could it, indeed, be believed, that a young nobleman of such expectations, in every way, as those of the Earl of Melbury's only son, Lord Granville, would have given his hand to the orphan and destitute daughter of an insolvent man of business, had she not possessed every advantage, nay, every perfection to which human nature can rise?'
Affrighted by this so open relation, drawn forth involuntarily from the nobly ingenuous Gabriella, in the persuasion that Sir Jaspar was already a confidential, and might become a useful friend; Juliet, in the first moment, was advancing to stop it; but her heart, yet more than her ear, was so fascinated by the generous eulogy of her virtuous, though lowly mother, from the offspring of a house whose height, and natal prejudices, might have palliated, upon this subject, the language even of disdain; that she could not prevail with herself to break into what she considered as sacred praise.
''Tis even so, then!' cried Sir Jaspar, with smiling delight; 'this forlorn, but most beautiful Wanderer, – this so long concealed, and mysterious, but most lovely incognita, is the daughter of the late Lord Granville, and the grand-daughter of the late Earl of Melbury!'
Utterly confounded, to hear the secret history of her birth and family thus casually, yet irretrievably discovered, Juliet, trembling, again shrunk back; yet would not, now, and unavailingly, check the ardent zeal of her high-minded friend, since without any added danger, it might procure some useful intelligence.
The willing Baronet, whose sole desire was to keep up the conversation, wanted no urging to relate all that he had gathered from the loquacious Selina. Lord Denmeath, upon the sudden disappearance of Miss Ellis, had been surprised into confessing, that he had a faint notion that he knew something of that young person; that there had been, once, an odd story, – a report – that a young woman was existing in France, who was some way belonging to the late Lord Granville, his sister's husband; though without ever having been acknowledged by the family. He let fall, also, sundry obscure hints of information, of the most serious import, which he had recently received, relating to this young woman; but which he would not divulge, till he had investigated; as he began to surmise, that it had been conveyed to him for some fraudulent and mercenary purpose. Mrs Ireton, to all this, had answered, that she had suspected, from the beginning, that the creature was an adventurer; and that she was now fully convinced that they had been played upon by a supposititious person. Lord Denmeath, though he forbore confirming this assertion, listened to it with a smile of concurrence.