With the form conforming duly,

Senseless what it meaneth truly,

Go to church—the world require you,

  To balls—the world require you too,

And marry—papa and mama desire you,

   And your sisters and schoolfellows do.

—A. H. Clough, “Duty” (1841)

“Oh! no, what he!” she cried in scorn,

“I woulden gi’e a penny vor’n;

The best ov him’s outzide in view;

His cwoat is gay enough, ‘tis true,

But then the wold vo’k didden bring

En up to know a single thing…”

—William Barnes, Poems in the Dorset Dialect (1869)

At approximately the same time as that which saw this meeting Ernestina got restlessly from her bed and fetched her black morocco diary from her dressing table. She first turned rather sulkily to her entry of that morning, which was cer-tainly not very inspired from a literary point of view: “Wrote letter to Mama. Did not see dearest Charles. Did not go out, tho’ it is very fine. Did not feel happy.”

It had been a very did-not sort of day for the poor girl, who had had only Aunt Tranter to show her displeasure to. There had been Charles’s daffodils and jonquils, whose per-fume she now inhaled, but even they had vexed her at first. Aunt Tranter’s house was small, and she had heard Sam knock on the front door downstairs; she had heard the wicked and irreverent Mary open it—a murmur of voices and then a distinct, suppressed gurgle of laughter from the maid, a slammed door. The odious and abominable suspicion crossed her mind that Charles had been down there, flirting; and this touched on one of her deepest fears about him.

She knew he had lived in Paris, in Lisbon, and traveled much; she knew he was eleven years older than herself; she knew he was attractive to women. His answers to her discreetly playful interrogations about his past conquests were always discreetly playful in return; and that was the rub. She felt he must be hiding something—a tragic French countess, a passionate Portuguese marquesa. Her mind did not allow itself to run to a Parisian grisette or an almond-eyed inn-girl at Cintra, which would have been rather nearer the truth. But in a way the matter of whether he had slept with other women worried her less than it might a modern girl. Of course Ernestina uttered her autocratic “I must not” just as soon as any such sinful speculation crossed her mind; but it was really Charles’s heart of which she was jealous. That, she could not bear to think of having to share, either historically or presently. Occam’s useful razor was unknown to her. Thus the simple fact that he had never really been in love became clear proof to Ernestina, on her darker days, that he had once been passionately so. His calm exterior she took for the terrible silence of a recent battlefield, Waterloo a month after; instead of for what it really was—a place without history.

When the front door closed, Ernestina allowed dignity to control her for precisely one and a half minutes, whereupon her fragile little hand reached out and peremptorily pulled the gilt handle beside her bed. A pleasantly insistent tinkle filtered up from the basement kitchen; and soon afterwards, there were footsteps, a knock, and the door opened to reveal Mary bearing a vase with a positive fountain of spring flowers. The girl came and stood by the bed, her face half hidden by the blossoms, smiling, impossible for a man to have been angry with—and therefore quite the reverse to Ernestina, who frowned sourly and reproachfully at this unwelcome vision of Flora.

Of the three young women who pass through these pages Mary was, in my opinion, by far the prettiest. She had infi-nitely the most life, and infinitely the least selfishness; and physical charms to match ... an exquisitely pure, if pink complexion, corn-colored hair and delectably wide gray-blue eyes, eyes that invited male provocation and returned it as gaily as it was given. They bubbled as the best champagne bubbles, irrepressibly; and without causing flatulence. Not even the sad Victorian clothes she had so often to wear could hide the trim, plump promise of her figure—indeed, “plump” is unkind. I brought up Ronsard’s name just now; and her figure required a word from his vocabulary, one for which we have no equivalent in English: rondelet—all that is seduc-tive in plumpness without losing all that is nice in slimness.

Mary’s great-great-granddaughter, who is twenty-two years old this month I write in, much resembles her ancestor; and her face is known over the entire world, for she is one of the more celebrated younger English film actresses.

But it was not, I am afraid, the face for 1867. It had not, for instance, been at all the face for Mrs. Poulteney, to whom it had become familiar some three years previously. Mary was the niece of a cousin of Mrs. Fairley, who had wheedled Mrs. Poulteney into taking the novice into the unkind kitchen. But Marlborough House and Mary had suited each other as well as a tomb would a goldfinch; and when one day Mrs. Poulteney was somberly surveying her domain and saw from her upstairs window the disgusting sight of her stableboy soliciting a kiss, and not being very successfully resisted, the goldfinch was given an instant liberty; where-upon it flew to Mrs. Tranter’s, in spite of Mrs. Poulteney’s solemn warnings to that lady as to the foolhardiness of harboring such proven dissoluteness.

In Broad Street Mary was happy. Mrs. Tranter liked pretty girls; and pretty, laughing girls even better. Of course, Ernestina was her niece, and she worried for her more; but Ernestina she saw only once or twice a year, and Mary she saw every day. Below her mobile, flirtatious surface the girl had a gentle affectionateness; and she did not stint, she returned the warmth that was given. Ernestina did not know a dreadful secret of that house in Broad Street; there were times, if cook had a day off, when Mrs. Tranter sat and ate with Mary alone in the downstairs kitchen; and they were not the unhappiest hours in either of their lives.

Mary was not faultless; and one of her faults was a certain envy of Ernestina. It was not only that she ceased abruptly to be the tacit favorite of the household when the young lady from London arrived; but the young lady from London came also with trunkfuls of the latest London and Paris fashions, not the best recommendation to a servant with only three dresses to her name—and not one of which she really liked, even though the best of them she could really dislike only because it had been handed down by the young princess from the capital. She also thought Charles was a beautiful man for a husband; a great deal too good for a pallid creature like Ernestina. This was why Charles had the frequent benefit of those gray-and-periwinkle eyes when she opened the door to him or passed him in the street. In wicked fact the creature picked her exits and entrances to coincide with Charles’s; and each time he raised his hat to her in the street she mentally cocked her nose at Ernestina; for she knew very well why Mrs. Tranter’s niece went upstairs so abruptly after Charles’s departures. Like all soubrettes, she dared to think things her young mistress did not; and knew it.

Having duly and maliciously allowed her health and cheer-fulness to register on the invalid, Mary placed the flowers on the bedside commode.

“From Mr. Charles, Miss Tina. With ‘er complimums.” Mary spoke in a dialect notorious for its contempt of pro-nouns and suffixes.

“Place them on my dressing table. I do not like them so close.”

Mary obediently removed them there and disobediently began to rearrange them a little before turning to smile at the suspicious Ernestina.

“Did he bring them himself?”

“No, miss.”

“Where is Mr. Charles?”

“Doan know, miss. I didn’ ask’un.” But her mouth was pressed too tightly together, as if she wanted to giggle.

“But I heard you speak with the man.”

“Yes, miss.”

“What about?”

“’Twas just the time o’ day, miss.”

“Is that what made you laugh?”

“Yes, miss. ‘Tis the way ‘e speaks, miss.”

The Sam who had presented himself at the door had in fact borne very little resemblance to the mournful and indig-nant young man who had stropped the razor. He had thrust the handsome bouquet into the mischievous Mary’s arms. “For the bootiful young lady hupstairs.” Then dexterously he had placed his foot where the door had been about to shut and as dexterously produced from behind his back, in his other hand, while his now free one swept off his ^ la mode near-brimless topper, a little posy of crocuses. “And for the heven more lovely one down.” Mary had blushed a deep pink; the pressure of the door on Sam’s foot had mysteriously lightened. He watched her smell the yellow flowers; not po-litely, but genuinely, so that a tiny orange smudge of saffron appeared on the charming, impertinent nose.

“That there bag o’ soot will be delivered as bordered.” She bit her lips, and waited. “Hon one condition. No tick. Hit must be a-paid for at once.”

“’Ow much would’er cost then?”

The forward fellow eyed his victim, as if calculating a fair price; then laid a finger on his mouth and gave a profoundly unambiguous wink. It was this that had provoked that smoth-ered laugh; and the slammed door.

Ernestina gave her a look that would have not disgraced Mrs. Poulteney. “You will kindly remember that he comes from London.”

“Yes, miss.”

“Mr. Smithson has already spoken to me of him. The man fancies himself a Don Juan.”

“What’s that then, Miss Tina?”

There was a certain eager anxiety for further information in Mary’s face that displeased Ernestina very much.

“Never mind now. But if he makes advances I wish to be told at once. Now bring me some barley water. And be more discreet in future.”

There passed a tiny light in Mary’s eyes, something singu-larly like a flash of defiance. But she cast down her eyes and her flat little lace cap, bobbing a token curtsy, and left the room. Three flights down, and three flights up, as Ernestina, who had not the least desire for Aunt Tranter’s wholesome but uninteresting barley water, consoled herself by remem-bering.

But Mary had in a sense won the exchange, for it remind-ed Ernest............