Doubtless if Dorothy had shown any marked acknowledgment of the precedency of their rights—­any eagerness to conciliate the aborigines of the circle, the ladies would have been more friendly inclined; but while capable of endless love and veneration, there was little of the conciliatory in her nature.  Hence Mrs. Doughty looked upon her with a rather stately, indifference, my lady Broughton with a mild wish to save her poor, proud, protestant soul, and mistress Amanda Serafina said she hated her; but then ever since the Fall there has been a disproportion betwixt the feelings of young ladies and the language in which they represent them.  Mrs. Doughty neglected her, and Dorothy did not know it; lady Broughton said solemn things to her, and she never saw the point of them; but when mistress Amanda half closed her eyes and looked at her in snake-Geraldine fashion, she met her with a full, wide-orbed, questioning gaze, before which Amanda’s eyes dropped, and she sank full fathom five towards the abyss of real hatred.

During the dinner hour, the three generally talked together in an impregnable manner—­not that they were by any means bosom-friends, for two of them had never before united in anything except despising good, soft lady Broughton.  When they were altogether in their mistress’s presence, they behaved to Dorothy and to each other with studious politeness.

The ladies Elizabeth and Anne, had their gentlewomen also, in all only three, however, who also ate at the housekeeper’s table, but kept somewhat apart from the rest—­yet were, in a distant way, friendly to Dorothy.

But hers, as we have seen, was a nature far more capable of attaching itself to a few than of pleasing many; and her heart went out to lady Margaret, whom she would have come ere long to regard as a mother, had she not behaved to her more like an elder sister.  Lady Margaret’s own genuine behaviour had indeed little of the matronly in it; when her husband came into the room, she seemed to grow instantly younger, and her manner changed almost to that of a playful girl.  It is true, Dorothy had been struck with the dignity of her manner amid all the frankness of her reception, but she soon found that, although her nature was full of all real dignities, that which belonged to her carriage never appeared in the society of those she loved, and was assumed only, like the thin shelter of a veil, in the presence of those whom she either knew or trusted less.  Before her ladies, she never appeared without some restraint—­manifest in a certain measuredness of movement, slowness of speech, and choice of phrase; but before a month was over, Dorothy was delighted to find that the reserve instantly vanished when she happened to be left alone with her.

She took an early opportunity of informing her mistress of the relationship between herself and Scudamore, stating that she knew little or nothing of him, having seen him only once before she came to the castle.  The youth on his part took the first fitting opportunity of addressing her in lady Margaret’s presence, and soon they were known to be cousins all over the castle.