Framley Parsonage, Anthony Trollope [popular e readers txt] 📗

that she could not quite say ladylike, though she would fain have done so had she dared.

“Oh, certainly,” said the doctor. “But, Mary, why are you dissecting Miss Dunstable’s character with so much ingenuity?”

“Well, uncle, I will tell you why; because⁠—” and Mrs. Gresham, while she was speaking, got up from her chair, and going round the table to her uncle’s side, put her arm round his neck till her face was close to his, and then continued speaking as she stood behind him out of his sight⁠—“because⁠—I think that Miss Dunstable is⁠—is very fond of you; and that it would make her happy if you would⁠—ask her to be your wife.”

“Mary!” said the doctor, turning round with an endeavour to look his niece in the face.

“I am quite in earnest, uncle⁠—quite in earnest. From little things that she has said, and little things that I have seen, I do believe what I now tell you.”

“And you want me to⁠—”

“Dear uncle; my own one darling uncle, I want you only to do that which will make you⁠—make you happy. What is Miss Dunstable to me compared to you?” And then she stooped down and kissed him.

The doctor was apparently too much astounded by the intimation given him to make any further immediate reply. His niece, seeing this, left him that she might go and dress; and when they met again in the drawing-room Frank Gresham was with them.

XXIX Miss Dunstable at Home

Miss Dunstable did not look like a lovelorn maiden, as she stood in a small antechamber at the top of her drawing-room stairs receiving her guests. Her house was one of those abnormal mansions, which are to be seen here and there in London, built in compliance rather with the rules of rural architecture, than with those which usually govern the erection of city streets and town terraces. It stood back from its brethren, and alone, so that its owner could walk round it. It was approached by a short carriageway; the chief door was in the back of the building; and the front of the house looked on to one of the parks. Miss Dunstable in procuring it had had her usual luck. It had been built by an eccentric millionnaire at an enormous cost; and the eccentric millionnaire, after living in it for twelve months, had declared that it did not possess a single comfort, and that it was deficient in most of those details which, in point of house accommodation, are necessary to the very existence of man. Consequently the mansion was sold, and Miss Dunstable was the purchaser. Cranbourn House it had been named, and its present owner had made no change in this respect; but the world at large very generally called it Ointment Hall, and Miss Dunstable herself as frequently used that name for it as any other. It was impossible to quiz Miss Dunstable with any success, because she always joined in the joke herself.

Not a word further had passed between Mrs. Gresham and Dr. Thorne on the subject of their last conversation; but the doctor as he entered the lady’s portals amongst a tribe of servants and in a glare of light, and saw the crowd before him and the crowd behind him, felt that it was quite impossible that he should ever be at home there. It might be all right that a Miss Dunstable should live in this way, but it could not be right that the wife of Dr. Thorne should so live. But all this was a matter of the merest speculation, for he was well aware⁠—as he said to himself a dozen times⁠—that his niece had blundered strangely in her reading of Miss Dunstable’s character.

When the Gresham party entered the anteroom into which the staircase opened, they found Miss Dunstable standing there surrounded by a few of her most intimate allies. Mrs. Harold Smith was sitting quite close to her; Dr. Easyman was reclining on a sofa against the wall, and the lady who habitually lived with Miss Dunstable was by his side. One or two others were there also, so that a little running conversation was kept up, in order to relieve Miss Dunstable of the tedium which might otherwise be engendered by the work she had in hand. As Mrs. Gresham, leaning on her husband’s arm, entered the room, she saw the back of Mrs. Proudie, as that lady made her way through the opposite door, leaning on the arm of the bishop.

Mrs. Harold Smith had apparently recovered from the annoyance which she must no doubt have felt when Miss Dunstable so utterly rejected her suit on behalf of her brother. If any feeling had existed, even for a day, calculated to put a stop to the intimacy between the two ladies, that feeling had altogether died away, for Mrs. Harold Smith was conversing with her friend, quite in the old way. She made some remark on each of the guests as they passed by, and apparently did so in a manner satisfactory to the owner of the house, for Miss Dunstable answered with her kindest smiles, and in that genial, happy tone of voice which gave its peculiar character to her good humour:

“She is quite convinced that you are a mere plagiarist in what you are doing,” said Mrs. Harold Smith, speaking of Mrs. Proudie.

“And so I am. I don’t suppose there can be anything very original nowadays about an evening party.”

“But she thinks you are copying her.”

“And why not? I copy everybody that I see, more or less. You did not at first begin to wear big petticoats out of your own head? If Mrs. Proudie has any such pride as that, pray don’t rob her of it. Here’s the doctor and the Greshams. Mary, my darling, how are you?” and in spite of all her grandeur of apparel, Miss Dunstable took hold of Mrs. Gresham and kissed her⁠—to the disgust of the dozen-and-a-half of the distinguished fashionable world who were passing up the stairs behind.

The doctor was somewhat repressed