CHAPTER XLIII

ROSE

Have you seen a young audacious spirit smitten to the earth?  It is a singular study; and, in the case of young women, a trap for inexperienced men.  Rose, who had commanded and managed every one surrounding her since infancy, how humble had she now become!—­how much more womanly in appearance, and more child-like at heart!  She was as wax in Lady Elburne’s hands.  A hint of that veiled episode, the Beckley campaign, made Rose pliant, as if she had woven for herself a rod of scorpions.  The high ground she had taken; the perfect trust in one; the scorn of any judgement, save her own; these had vanished from her.  Rose, the tameless heroine who had once put her mother’s philosophy in action, was the easiest filly that turbaned matron ever yet drove into the straight road of the world.  It even surprised Lady Jocelyn to see how wonderfully she had been broken in by her grandmother.  Her ladyship wrote to Drummond to tell him of it, and Drummond congratulated her, saying, however:  ’Changes of this sort don’t come of conviction.  Wait till you see her at home.  I think they have been sticking pins into the sore part.’

Drummond knew Rose well.  In reality there was no change in her.  She was only a suppliant to be spared from ridicule:  spared from the application of the scourge she had woven for herself.

And, ah! to one who deigned to think warmly still of such a disgraced silly creature, with what gratitude she turned!  He might well suppose love alone could pour that profusion of jewels at his feet.

Ferdinand, now Lord Laxley, understood the merits of his finger-nails better than the nature of young women; but he is not to be blamed for presuming that Rose had learnt to adore him.  Else why did she like his company so much?  He was not mistaken in thinking she looked up to him.  She seemed to beg to be taken into his noble serenity.  In truth she sighed to feel as he did, above everybody!—­she that had fallen so low!  Above everybody!—­born above them, and therefore superior by grace divine!  To this Rose Jocelyn had come—­she envied the mind of Ferdinand.

He, you may be sure, was quite prepared to accept her homage.  Rose he had always known to be just the girl for him; spirited, fresh, and with fine teeth; and once tied to you safe to be staunch.  They walked together, rode together, danced together.  Her soft humility touched him to eloquence.  Say she was a little hypocrite, if you like, when the blood came to her cheeks under his eyes.  Say she was a heartless minx for allowing it to be bruited that she and Ferdinand were betrothed.  I can but tell you that her blushes were blushes of gratitude to one who could devote his time to such a disgraced silly creature, and that she, in her abject state, felt a secret pleasure in the protection Ferdinand’s name appeared to extend over her, and was hardly willing to lose it.