3)***


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Note: Project Gutenberg also has the other two volumes of this
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      Volume I: see http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35428
      Volume II: see http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35429


      Images of the original pages are available through
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A CHARMING FELLOW.

by

FRANCES ELEANOR TROLLOPE,

Author of "Aunt Margaret's Trouble," "Mabel's Progress," etc. etc.

In Three Volumes.

VOL. III.







London:
Chapman and Hall, 193, Piccadilly.
1876.

Charles Dickens and Evans,
Crystal Palace Press.




A CHARMING FELLOW.




CHAPTER I.


There was a "scene" that evening at Ivy Lodge--not the less a "scene" in
that it was conducted on genteel methods. Mrs. Algernon Errington
inflicted on her husband during dinner a recapitulation of all her
wrongs and injuries which could be covertly hinted at. She would not
broadly speak out her meaning before "the servants." The phrase shaped
itself thus in her mind from old habit. But in truth "the servants" were
represented by one plump-faced damsel in a yellow print gown, into which
her person seemed to have been inserted in the same way that bran is
inserted into the cover of a pincushion. She seemed to have been stuffed
into it by means of considerable force, and with less reference to the
natural shape of her body than to the arbitrary outlines of the case
made for it by a Whitford dressmaker.

This girl ministered to her master and mistress during dinner, pouring
water and wine, changing knives and plates, handing vegetables, and not
unfrequently dropping a spoon or a sprinkling of hot gravy into the laps
of her employers. She had succeeded to Slater, who resigned her post
after a trial of some six weeks' duration. Castalia, in despair at this
desertion, had written to Lady Seely to send her a maid from London
forthwith. But to this application she received a reply to the effect
that my lady could not undertake to find any one who would suit her
niece, and that her ladyship thought Castalia had much better make up
her mind to do without a regular lady's-maid, and take some humbler
attendant, who would make herself generally useful.

"I always knew Slater wouldn't stay with you," wrote Lady Seely; "and
you won't get any woman of that kind to stay. You can't afford to keep
one. Your uncle is fairly well; but poor Fido gives me a great deal of
unhappiness. He eats nothing."

Not by any means from conviction or submission to the imperious advice
of Lady Seely, but under the yoke of stern necessity, Castalia had
consented to try a young woman of the neighbourhood, "highly
recommended." And this abigail, in her tight yellow gown, was the cause
of Mrs. Algernon's reticence during dinner. The poor lady might,
however, have spared herself this restraint, if its object were to keep
her servants in the dark as to domestic disagreements; for no sooner had
Lydia (that was the abigail's name) reached the kitchen, than she and
Polly, the cook, began a discussion of Mr. and Mrs. Algernon Errington's
private affairs, which displayed a surprising knowledge of very minute
details, and an almost equally surprising power of piecing evidence
together.

When Lydia was gone, Algernon lit a cigar and drew up his chair to the
fireside, where he sat silent, staring at his elegantly-slippered feet
on the fender. Castalia rose, fidgeted about the room, walked to the
door, stopped, turned back, and, standing directly opposite to Algernon,
said querulously, "Do you mean to remain here?"

"For the present, yes; out of consideration for you. You dislike me to
smoke in the drawing-room, do you not?"

"Why should you smoke at all?"

Algernon raised his eyebrows, shrugged his shoulders, crossed one leg
over the other, and made no answer. His wife went away, and sitting down
alone on a corner of the sofa in her little drawing-room, cried bitterly
for a long time.

She was made to raise her tear-stained face by feeling a hand passed
gently over her hair. She looked up, and found her husband standing
beside her. "What's the matter, little woman?" he asked, in a
half-coaxing, half-bantering tone, like one speaking to a naughty
child, too young to be seriously reproved or argued with.

Now, although Castalia was haughty by education and insolent by temper,
she had very little real pride and no dignity in her character. To be
noticed and caressed by Algernon was to her a sufficient compensation
for almost any indignity. There was but one passion of her nature which
had