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378 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP
been disappointed of a great legacy from the Earl his great-uncle,
a man whose boots were in that lamentable condition, laugh so, and
have such high spirits ? To think of such an impudent ragged
blackguard, as Ringwood Twysden called his cousin, daring to be
happy ! The fact is, that clap of laughter smote those three
Twysden people like three boxes on the ear, and made all their
cheeks tingle and blush at once. At Philip's merriment clouds
which had come over Charlotte's sweet face would be chased away.
As she clung to him doubts which throbbed at the girl's heart
would vanish. When she was acting those scenes of the past
night's entertainment, she was not always happy. As she talked
and prattled, her own spirits would rise ; and hope and natural joy
would spring in her heart again, and come flushing up to her cheek.
Charlotte was being a hypocrite, as, thank Heaven, all good women
sometimes are. She had griefs : she hid them from him. She had
doubts and fears : they fled when he came in view, and she clung
to his strong arm, and looked in his honest blue eyes. She did not
tell him of those painful nights when her eyes were wakeful and
tearful. A yellow old woman in a white jacket, with a nightcap
and a nightlight, would come, night after night, to the side of her
little bed ; and there stand, and with her grim voice bark against
Philip. That old woman's lean finger would point to all the rents
in poor Philip's threadbare paletot of a character—point to the
holes and tear them wider open. She would stamp on those muddy
boots. She would throw up her peaked nose at the idea of the
poor fellow's pipe—his pipe, his great companion and comforter
when his dear little mistress was away. She would discourse on
the partners of the night ; the evident attentions of this gentleman,
the politeness and high breeding of that.
And when that dreary nightly torture was over, and Charlotte's
mother had left the poor child to herself, sometimes Madame
Smolensk, sitting up over her ledgers and bills, and wakeful with
her own cares, would steal up and console poor Charlotte; and
bring her some tisane, excellent for the nerves; and talk to her
about—about the subject of which Charlotte best liked to hear.
And though Smolensk was civil to Mrs. Baynes in the morning, as
her professional duty obliged her to be, she has owned that she
often felt a desire to strangle Madame la Générale for her conduct
to her little angel of a daughter ; and all because Monsieur Philippe
smells the pipe, parbleu ! " What ? a family that owes you the
bread which they eat; and they draw back for a pipe! The
cowards, the cowards ! A soldier's daughter is not afraid of it.
Merci ! Tenez, M. Philippe," she said to our friend when matters
came to an extremity. " Do you know what in your place I would