Her hostess greeted Miss Ley, notwithstanding, with a certain grim affability reserved only for her; she was, at all events, the least detestable of her relations, and, though neither docile nor polite, at least was never tedious. Her conversation braced Miss Dwarris so that with her she was usually at her best, and sometimes, forgetting her overbearing habit, showed herself a sensible and entertaining woman, of not altogether unamiable disposition.
“You’re growing old, my dear,” said Miss Dwarris, when they sat down to dinner, looking at her guest with eyes keen to detect wrinkles and crowsfeet.
“You flatter me,” Miss Ley retorted; “antiquity is the only excuse for a woman who has determined on a single life.”
“I suppose, like the rest of them, you would have married if any one had asked you.”
Miss Ley smiled.
“Two months ago an Italian prince offered me his hand and heart, Eliza.”
“A Papist would do anything,” replied Miss Dwarris. “I suppose you told him your income and he found he’d misjudged the strength of his affections.”
“I refused him because he was so virtuous.”
“I shouldn’t have thought at your age you could afford to pick and choose, Polly.”
“Allow me to observe that you have an amiable faculty of thinking of one subject at one time in two diametrically opposed ways.”
Miss Ley was a slender woman of middle size, her hair, very plainly arranged, beginning to turn gray, and her face, already much wrinkled, by its clear precision of feature indicating a comfortable strength of character; her lips, thin but expressive, mobile, added to this appearance of determination. She was by no means handsome, and had certainly never been pretty; but her carriage was not without grace nor her manner without fascination. Her eyes were very bright and so shrewd as sometimes to be almost disconcerting: without words, they could make pretentiousness absurd; and most affectatious, under that searching glance, part contemptuous, part amused, willingly hid themselves. Yet, as Miss Dwarris took care to remind her, she was not without her own especial pose, but it was carried out so admirably, with such a restrained, comely decorum, that few observed it, and such as did found not the heart to condemn: it was the perfect art that concealed itself. To execute this æsthetic gesture, it pleased Miss Ley to dress with the greatest possible simplicity, usually in black, and her only ornament was a renaissance jewel of such exquisite beauty that no museum would have disdained to possess it: this she wore around her neck attached to a long gold chain, and she fingered it with pleasure to show, according to her plain-spoken relative, the undoubted beauty of her hands. Her well-fitting shoes and the elaborate open-work of her silk stockings suggested also a not unreasonable pride in a shapely foot, small and high of instep. Thus attired, when she had visitors, Miss Ley sat in an oak, Italian straight-backed chair, delicately carved, which was placed between two windows against the wall; and she cultivated already a certain primness of manner which made very effective the audacious criticism of life wherewith she was used to entertain her friends.
Two mornings after her arrival in Old Queen Street, Miss Ley announced her intention to go out. She came downstairs with a very fashionable parasol—a purchase on her way through Paris.
“You’re not going out with that thing?” cried Miss Dwarris, scornfully.
“I am indeed.”
“Nonsense; you must take an umbrella. It’s going to rain.”
“I have a new sunshade and an old umbrella, Eliza: I feel certain it will be fine.”
“My dear, you know nothing about the English climate. I tell you it will pour cats and dogs.”
“Fiddlesticks, Eliza.”
“Polly,” answered Miss Dwarris, her temper rising. “I wish you to take an umbrella. The barometer is going down, and I have a tingling in my feet, which is a sure sign of wet. It’s very irreligious of you to presume to say what the weather is going to be.”
“I venture to think that, meteorologically, I am no less acquainted with the ways of Providence than you.”
“That I think is not funny, but blasphemous, Polly. In my house, I expect people to do as I tell them, and I insist on your taking an umbrella.”
“Don’t be absurd, Eliza.”
Miss Dwarris rang the bell and, when the butler appeared, ordered him to fetch her own umbrella for Miss Ley.
“I absolutely refuse to use it,” said the younger lady, smiling.
“Pray remember that you are my guest, Polly.”
“And, therefore, entitled to do exactly as I like.”
Miss Dwarris rose to her feet, a massive old woman of commanding presence, and stretched out a threatening hand.
“If you leave this house without an umbrella, you shall not come into it again. You shall never cross this threshold so long as I am alive.”
Miss Ley cannot have been in the best of humours that morning, for she pursed her lips in the manner already characteristic of her, and looked at her elderly cousin with a cold scorn, most difficult to bear.
“My dear Eliza, you have a singularly exaggerated idea of your importance. Are there no hotels in London? You appear to think I stay with you for pleasure rather than to mortify my flesh. And, really, the cross is growing too heavy for me, for I think you must have quite the worst cook in the metropolis.”
“She’s been with me for five and twenty years,” answered Miss Dwarris, two red spots appearing on her cheeks, “and no one has ventured to complain of the cooking before. If any of my guests had done so, I should have answered that what was good enough for me was a great deal too good for any one else. I know that you’re obstinate, Polly, and quick-tempered, and this impertinence I am willing to overlook. Do you still refuse to do as I wish?”
“Yes.”
Miss Dwarris rang the bell violently.
“Tell Martha to pack Miss Ley’s boxes at once, and call a four-wheeler,” she cried, in tones of thunder.
“Very well, Madam,” answered the butler, used to his mistress’s vagaries.
Then Miss Dwarris turned to her guest, who observed her with irritating good-humour.
“I hope you realise, Polly, that I fully mean what I say.”
“All is over between us,” answered Miss Ley, mockingly, “and shall I return your letters and your photographs?”
Miss Dwarris sat for a while, in silent anger, watching her cousin, who took up the Morning Post, and, with great calmness, read the fashionable intelligence. Presently the butler announced that the four-wheeler was at the door.
“Well, Polly, so you’re really going?”
“I can hardly stay when you’ve had my boxes packed and sent for a cab,” replied Miss Ley, mildly.
“It’s your own doing; I don’t wish you to go. If you’ll confess that you were headstrong and obstinate, and if you’ll take an umbrella, I am willing to let bygones be bygones.”
“Look at the sun,” answered Miss Ley.
And, as if actually to annoy the tyrannous old woman, the shining rays danced into the room and made importunate patterns on the carpet.
“I think I should tell you, Polly, that it was my intention to leave you ten thousand pounds in my will. This intention I shall, of course, not now carry out.”
“You’d far better leave your money to the Dwarris people: upon my word, considering that they’ve been related to you for over sixty years, I think they thoroughly deserve it.”