ell, Vincent, you have returned to a strange house; strange doings have there been during your absence.” Such were the words with which Arabella had greeted her young brother, when, on his first arrival, he had burst into the drawing-room, with all the impatient joy of a boy just emancipated from school. “You’ll hardly believe what has happened,” said Louisa.
“Why, what’s the matter?” exclaimed Vincent, looking in surprise from the one to the other.
“We none of us can tell where we may find ourselves in another month,” continued Louisa. “I foretell that I shall be finishing my education in Jersey, and Arabella in the Isle of Man.”
“What has happened?” cried Vincent impatiently; “anything in which our pretty step-mother is concerned?”
“Pretty step-mother, indeed!” exclaimed Arabella. “She has begun to change and overturn everything in the house. Nothing is free from her meddling. She has turned off Mademoiselle Lafleur without so much as the shadow of a reason.”
“Turned off mademoiselle!” cried Vincent. “Well, I don’t break my heart about that; but it was a bold stroke for a beginning.”
“Then Mrs. Ventner.”
“Mrs. Ventner!” echoed Vincent in amazement. “I should have as soon expected to hear of her moving the Monument of London!”
“It won’t end here,” said Lady Selina oracularly, pursing in her thin lips, as if to restrain them from uttering some dread prognostication.
“Is it really Mrs. Effingham who is turning everything topsy-turvy?” cried the schoolboy; “why, she looked as gentle as a dove!”
“A dove!—she’s a vulture,” said Louisa.
“A vampire!” muttered her sister.
“What I cannot bear,” observed Lady Selina, “is the art with which she conceals her designs. Smooth above, false beneath—wearing a mask of such perfect innocence, that she would take in any one who was unaccustomed to the ways of the world. I confess,” she added, in a tone of self-depreciation, “that I was deceived myself by her manner.”
“Oh! if she’s artful, I shall hate her,” exclaimed Vincent; “I can’t endure anything sly.”
“And so hypocritical,” chimed in Louisa; “she would pass herself off for such a saint. I believe that poor dear mademoiselle’s grand offence was liking a French book that was a little witty—a book which Mrs. Effingham unluckily hit upon when she came spying into our school-room in her fawning, hypocritical manner.”
“And to bring in such an ally to support her, before she dared let us know what she had done.”
“Yes,” said Lady Selina, “I am perfectly convinced—and I am one not often mistaken—that the arrival of Captain Thistlewood was a preconcerted arrangement.”
“Captain Thistlewood—who may he be?” inquired Vincent.
“Mrs. Effingham’s uncle,” replied Louisa. “The funniest old quiz—”
“The most blustering savage—”
“A low, vulgar fellow,” joined in Lady Selina; “one who thinks that he may swagger in a gentleman’s house as if he were on the deck of a whaler.”
“And does papa suffer it?” exclaimed Vincent.
“Mr. Effingham is infatuated, quite infatuated,” said the lady, apparently addressing the fire and not any one present, and speaking so low, that Vincent had to lean forward in order to catch her accents. “I do not know why it should be—I do not pretend to guess, but he certainly has not been like the same man ever since his second marriage.”
“Papa has grown much graver,” observed Louisa.
“And sadder,” joined in Arabella.
Lady Selina only uttered an “Ah!” with a slight jerk of the head; but what a world of meaning was condensed into the brief exclamation! Compassion for the infatuated husband, contempt for t............