up her reputation for good health, having always considered illness a want of self-control. So she gets wearied and worried by a crowd of people who are all of them open-mouthed for amusement of some kind; just like a brood of fledglings in a nest; so I have to be parent-bird, and pop morsels into their yellow leathery bills, to find them swallowed down before I can think of where to find the next. Oh, it’s ‘entertaining’ in the largest, literalest, most dreariest, sense of the word! So I have told a few lies this morning, and come off here for quietness and the comfort of complaining!”
Lady Harriet threw herself back in her chair, and yawned; Mrs. Gibson took one of her ladyship’s hands in a soft sympathising manner, and murmured—
“Poor Lady Harriet!” and then she purred affectionately.
After a pause Lady Harriet started up and said—“I used to take you as my arbiter of morals when I was a little girl. Tell me, do you think it wrong to tell lies?”
“Oh, my dear! how can you ask such questions?—of course it is very wrong—very wicked indeed, I think I may say. But I know you were only joking, when you said you had told lies.”
“No, indeed, I wasn’t. I told as plump fat lies as you would wish to hear. I said I ‘was obliged to go into Hollingford on business;’ when the truth was, there was no obligation in the matter, only an insupportable desire of being free from my visitors for an hour or two, and my only business was to come here, and yawn, and complain, and lounge at my leisure. I really think I’m unhappy at having told a story, as children express it.”
“But, my dear Lady Harriet,” said Mrs. Gibson, a little puzzled as to the exact meaning of the words that were trembling on her tongue, “I am sure you thought that you meant what you said, when you said it.”
“No, I didn’t,” put in Lady Harriet.
“And besides, if you didn’t, it was the fault of the tiresome people who drove you into such straits—yes, it was certainly their fault, not yours—and then you know the conventions of society—ah, what trammels they are!”
Lady Harriet was silent for a minute or two; then she said—“Tell me, Clare; you’ve told lies sometimes, haven’t you?”
“Lady Harriet! I think you might have known me better; but I know you don’t mean it, dear.”
“Yes, I do. You must have told white lies, at any rate. How did you feel after them?”
“I should have been miserable, if I ever had. I should have died of self-reproach. ‘The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,’ has always seemed to me such a fine passage. But then I have so much that is unbending in my nature, and in our sphere of life there are so few temptations; if we are humble we are also simple, and unshackled by etiquette.”
“Then you blame me very much? If somebody else will blame me, I shan’t be so unhappy at what I said this morning.”
“I am sure I never blamed you; not in my innermost heart, dear Lady Harriet. Blame you, indeed! That would be presumption in me.”
“I think I shall set up a confessor! and it shan’t be you, Clare, for you have always been only too indulgent to me.”
After a pause she said—“Can you give me some lunch, Clare? I don’t mean to go home till three. My ‘business’ will take me till then, as the people at the Towers are duly informed.”