• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

In the very extremity of want, I had recourse again, and yet again, to the little packet in the case—the five letters. How splendid that month seemed whose skies had beheld the rising of these five stars! It was always at night I visited them, and not daring to ask every evening for a candle in the kitchen, I bought a wax-taper and matches to light it, and at the study-hour stole up to the dormitory, and feasted on my crust from the Barmecide’s loaf.10 It did not nourish me: I pined on it, and got as thin as a shadow: otherwise I was not ill.

Reading there somewhat late one evening, and feeling that the power to read was leaving me—for the letters from incessant perusal were losing all sap and significance: my gold was withering to leaves before my eyes, and I was sorrowing over the disillusion—suddenly a quick tripping foot ran up the stairs. I knew Ginevra Fanshawe’s step: she had dined in town that afternoon; she was now returned, and would come here to replace her shawl, &c., in the wardrobe.

Yes: in she came, dressed in bright silk, with her shawl falling from her shoulders, and her curls, half-uncurled in the damp of night, drooping careless and heavy upon her neck. I had hardly time to recasket my treasures and lock them up when she was at my side: her humour seemed none of the best.

‘It has been a stupid evening: they are stupid people,’ she began.

‘Who? Mrs. Cholmondeley? I thought you always found her house charming.’

‘I have not been to Mrs. Cholmondeley’s.’

‘Indeed! Have you made new acquaintance?’

‘My uncle de Bassompierre is come.’

‘Your uncle de Bassompierre! Are you not glad?—I thought he was a favourite.’

‘You thought wrong: the man is odious; I hate him.’

‘Because he is a foreigner? or for what other reason of equal weight?’

‘He is not a foreigner. The man is English enough, goodness knows; and had an English name till three or four years ago; but his mother was a foreigner, a de Bassompierre, and some of her family are dead and have left him estates, a title, and this name: he is quite a great man now.’

‘Do you hate him for that reason?’

‘Don’t I know what mama says about him? He is not my own uncle, but married mama’s sister. Mama detests him; she says he killed aunt Ginevra with unkindness: he looks like a bear. Such a dismal evening!’ she went on. ‘I’ll go no more to his big hotel. Fancy me walking into a room alone, and a great man fifty years old coming forwards, and after a few minutes’ conversation actually turning his back upon me, and then abruptly going out of the room. Such odd ways! I daresay his conscience smote him, for they all say at home I am the picture of Aunt Ginevra. Mama often declares the likeness is quite ridiculous.’

‘Were you the only visitor?’

‘The only visitor? Yes, then there was missy, my cousin: little spoiled, pampered thing.’

’M. de Bassompierre has a daughter?’

‘Yes, yes: don’t tease one with questions. Oh dear! I am so tired.’

She yawned. Throwing herself without ceremony on my bed, she added, ‘It seems Mademoiselle was nearly crushed to a jelly in a hubbub at the theatre some weeks ago.’

‘Ah! indeed. And they live at a large hotel in the Rue Crécy?’

Justement. How do you know?’

‘I have been there.’

‘Oh you have? Really! You go everywhere in these days. I suppose Mother Bretton took you? She and Esculapiusez have the entree of the de Bassompierre apartments: it seems “my son John” attended missy on the occasion of her accident—accident? Bah! All affectation! I don’t think she was squeezed more than she richly deserves for her airs. And now there is quite an intimacy struck up: I heard something about “Auld lang syne,” and what not? Oh, how stupid they all were!’

‘All!You said you were the only visitor?’

‘Did I? You see one forgets to particularize an old woman and her boy.’

‘Dr. and Mrs. Bretton were at M. de Bassompierre’s this evening?’

‘Ay, ay! as large as life; and missy played the hostess. What a conceited doll it is!’

Soured and listless, Miss Fanshawe was beginning to disclose the causes of her prostrate condition.