Bessie was not daunted.  Mrs. Musgrave was Mrs. Carnegie’s elder sister.  Young Musgrave and the young Carnegies called cousins, and while she was one of the Carnegies she was a cousin too.  Besides, Harry Musgrave was the nephew of her father’s second wife, and their comradeship dated from his visits to the rectory while her father was alive.  She did not offer explanations, but in her own mind she peremptorily refused to deny or relinquish that cousinship.  She went on eating in a dream of confusion, very rosy as to the cheeks and very downcast as to the eyes, but not at all ashamed.  The little girls wondered with great amazement.  Mr. Wiley did not relish his rebuke, and eyed Bessie with anything but charity.  His bad genius set him expatiating further on the hazardous theme of ambition in youths of low birth and mean estate, with allusions to Brook and the wheelwright’s shed that could not be misunderstood.  Mr. Fairfax, observing his granddaughter, felt uneasy.  Lady Latimer generalized to stop the subject.  Suddenly said Bessie, flashing at the rector, and quoting Mr. Carnegie, “You attribute to class what belongs to character.”  Then, out of her own irrepressible indignation, she added, “Harry Musgrave is as good a gentleman as you are, and little Christie too, though he may be only a carpenter’s son.” (Which was not saying much for them, as Mr. Phipps remarked when he was told the story.)

Lady Latimer stood up and motioned to all the young people to come away.  They vanished in retiring, some one road, some another, and for the next five minutes Bessie was left with my lady alone, angry and exquisitely uncomfortable, but not half alive yet to the comic aspect of her very original behavior.  She glanced with shy deprecation in Lady Latimer’s face, and my lady smiled with a perfect sympathy in her sensations.

“You are not afraid to speak up for an absent friend, but silence is the best answer to such impertinences,” said she, and then went on to talk of Abbotsmead and Kirkham till Bessie was almost cheated of her distressing self-consciousness.

Fairfield was a small house, but full of prettiness.  Bessie Fairfax had never seen anything so like a picture as the drawing-room, gay with flowers, perfumed, airy, all graceful ease and negligent comfort.  From a wide-open glass door a flight of steps descended to the rose-garden, now in its beauty.  Paintings, mirrors decorated the walls; books strewed the tables.  There were a hundred things, elegant, grotesque, and useless, to look at and admire.  How vivid, varied, delicious life must be thus adorned!  Bessie thought, and lost herself a little while in wonder and curiosity.  Then she turned to Lady Latimer again.  My lady had lost herself in reverie too; her countenance had an expression of weary restlessness and unsatisfied desire.  No doubt she had her private cares.  Bessie felt afraid, as if she had unwittingly surprised a secret.