Alice, or the Mysteries — Book 02

								

not been brought up in the style you think for."
"Mrs. Merton," said the rector, with great solemnity, "Miss Cameron may
know no better now; but what will she think of us hereafter?  It is my
maxim to recollect what people will be, and show them that respect which
may leave pleasing impressions when they have it in their power to show
us civility in return."
With many apologies, which quite overwhelmed poor Evelyn, she was
transferred from the little chamber, with its French bed and
bamboo-coloured washhand-stand, to an apartment with a buhl wardrobe and
a four-post bed with green silk curtains, usually appropriated to the
regular Christmas visitant, the Dowager Countess of Chipperton.  A pretty
morning room communicated with the sleeping apartment, and thence a
private staircase conducted into the gardens.  The whole family were duly
impressed and re-impressed with her importance.  No queen could be made
more of.  Evelyn mistook it all for pure kindness, and returned the
hospitality with an affection that extended to the whole family, but
particularly to the two little girls, and a beautiful black spaniel.  Her
dresses came down from London; her abigail arrived; the buhl wardrobe was
duly filled,--and Evelyn at last learned that it is a fine thing to be
rich.  An account of all these proceedings was forwarded to Lady
Vargrave, in a long and most complacent letter, by the rector himself.
The answer was short, but it contented the excellent clergyman; for it
approved of all he had done, and begged that Miss Cameron might have
everything that seemed proper to her station.
By the same post came two letters to Evelyn herself,--one from Lady
Vargrave, one from the curate.  They transported her from the fine room
and the buhl wardrobe to the cottage and the lawn; and the fine abigail,
when she came to dress her young lady's hair, found her weeping.
It was a matter of great regret to the rector that it was that time of
year when--precisely because the country is most beautiful--every one
worth knowing is in town.  Still, however, some stray guests found their
way to the rectory for a day or two, and still there were some
aristocratic old families in the neighbourhood, who never went up to
London: so that two days in the week the rector's wine flowed, the
whist-tables were set out, and the piano called into requisition.
Evelyn--the object of universal attention and admiration--was put at her
ease by her station itself; for good manners come like an instinct to
those on whom the world smiles.  Insensibly she acquired self-possession
and the smoothness of society; and if her child-like playfulness broke
out from all conventional restraint, it only made more charming and
brilliant the great heiress, whose delicate and fairy cast of beauty so
well became her graceful abandon of manner, and who looked so
unequivocally ladylike to the eyes that rested on Madame Devy's blondes
and satins.
Caroline was not so gay as she had been at the cottage.  Something seemed