CHAPTER IV

LAETITIA DALE

That was another surprise to the county.

Let us not inquire into the feelings of patiently starving women; they must obtain some sustenance of their own, since, as you perceive, they live; evidently they are not in need of a great amount of nourishment; and we may set them down for creatures with a rush-light of animal fire to warm them.  They cannot have much vitality who are so little exclamatory.  A corresponding sentiment of patient compassion, akin to scorn, is provoked by persons having the opportunity for pathos, and declining to use it.  The public bosom was open to Laetitia for several weeks, and had she run to it to bewail herself she would have been cherished in thankfulness for a country drama.  There would have been a party against her, cold people, critical of her pretensions to rise from an unrecognized sphere to be mistress of Patterne Hall, but there would also have been a party against Sir Willoughby, composed of the two or three revolutionists, tired of the yoke, which are to be found in England when there is a stir; a larger number of born sympathetics, ever ready to yield the tear for the tear; and here and there a Samaritan soul prompt to succour poor humanity in distress.  The opportunity passed undramatized.  Laetitia presented herself at church with a face mildly devout, according to her custom, and she accepted invitations to the Hall, she assisted at the reading of Willoughby’s letters to his family, and fed on dry husks of him wherein her name was not mentioned; never one note of the summoning call for pathos did this young lady blow.

So, very soon the public bosom closed.  She had, under the fresh interpretation of affairs, too small a spirit to be Lady Willoughby of Patterne; she could not have entertained becomingly; he must have seen that the girl was not the match for him in station, and off he went to conquer the remainder of a troublesome first attachment, no longer extremely disturbing, to judge from the tenour of his letters; really incomparable letters!  Lady Busshe and Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson enjoyed a perusal of them.  Sir Willoughby appeared as a splendid young representative island lord in these letters to his family, despatched from the principal cities of the United States of America.  He would give them a sketch of “our democratic cousins”, he said.  Such cousins!  They might all have been in the Marines.  He carried his English standard over that continent, and by simply jotting down facts, he left an idea of the results of the measurement to his family and friends at home.  He was an adept in the irony of incongruously grouping.  The nature of the Equality under the stars and stripes was presented in this manner.  Equality!  Reflections came occasionally:  “These cousins of ours are highly amusing.  I am among the descendants of the Roundheads.  Now and then an allusion to