"We shall have time to run through all the follies of the season
before June, when I hope to return here and set to work at a book I
have planned. I must collect the material for it in London. If I
leave town before the season is over, and you are unwilling to come
away with me, I can easily find some one who will take care of you
as long as you please to stay. I wish it were June already!"
Alice preferred Lydia's womanly impatience to her fatalistic calm.
It relieved her sense of inferiority, which familiarity had
increased rather than diminished. Yet she was beginning to persuade
herself, with some success, that the propriety of Lydia's manners
was at least questionable. That morning Miss Carew had not scrupled
to ask a man what his profession was; and this, at least, Alice
congratulated herself on being too well-bred to do. She had quite
lost her awe of the servants, and had begun to address them with an
unconscious haughtiness and a conscious politeness that were making
the word "upstart" common in the servants' hall. Bashville, the
footman, had risked his popularity there by opining that Miss Goff
was a fine young woman.
Bashville was in his twenty-fourth year, and stood five feet ten in
his stockings. At the sign of the Green Man in the village he was
known as a fluent orator and keen political debater. In the stables
he was deferred to as an authority on sporting affairs, and an
expert wrestler in the Cornish fashion. The women servants regarded
him with undissembled admiration. They vied with one another in
inventing expressions of delight when he recited before them, which,
as he had a good memory and was fond of poetry, he often did. They
were proud to go out walking with him. But his attentions never gave
rise to jealousy; for it was an open secret in the servants' hall
that he loved his mistress. He had never said anything to that
effect, and no one dared allude to it in his presence, much less
rally him on his weakness; but his passion was well known for all
that, and it seemed by no means so hopeless to the younger members
of the domestic staff as it did to the cook, the butler, and
Bashville himself. Miss Carew, who knew the value of good servants,
appreciated her footman's smartness, and paid him accordingly; but
she had no suspicion that she was waited on by a versatile young
student of poetry and public affairs, distinguished for his
gallantry, his personal prowess, his eloquence, and his influence on
local politics.