It had happened that my lady had ordered her carriage that morning, dressed herself with the habitual splendor, which but set off the shortcomings of her lean and angular person, egregiously coiffed, pulvilled and topknotted, and she had sent a message amounting to a command to Mistress Winthrop that she should drive in the park with her.
Poor Hortensia, whose one desire was to hide her face from the town's uncharitable sight just then, fearing, indeed, that Rumor's unscrupulous tongue would be as busy about her reputation as her ladyship had represented, attempted to assert herself by refusing to obey the command. It was in vain. Her ladyship dispensed with ambassadors, and went in person to convey her orders to her husband's ward, and to enforce them.
“What's this I am told?” quoth she, as she sailed into Hortensia's room. “Do my wishes count for nothing, that you send me pert answers by my woman?”
Hortensia rose. She had been sitting by the window, a book in her lap. “Not so, indeed, madam. Not pert, I trust. I am none so well, and I fear the sun.”
“'Tis little wonder,” laughed her ladyship; “and I'm glad on't, for it shows ye have a conscience somewhere. But 'tis no matter for that. I am tender for your reputation, mistress, and I'll not have you shunning daylight like the guilty thing ye know yourself to be.”
“'Tis false, madam,” said Hortensia, with indignation. “Your ladyship knows it to be false.”
“Harkee, ninny, if you'd have the town believe it false, you'll show yourself--show that ye have no cause for shame, no cause to hide you from the eyes of honest folk. Come, girl; bid your woman get your hood and tippet. The carriage stays for us.”
To Hortensia her ladyship's seemed, after all, a good argument. Did she hide, what must the town think but that it confirmed the talk that she made no doubt was going round already. Better to go forth and brave it, and surely it should disarm the backbiters if she showed herself in the park with Lord Rotherby's own mother.
It never occurred to her that this seeming tenderness for her reputation might be but wanton cruelty on her ladyship's part; a gratifying of her spleen against the girl by setting her in the pillory of public sight to the end that she should experience the insult of supercilious glances and lips that smile with an ostentation of furtiveness; a desire to put down her pride and break the spirit which my lady accounted insolent and stubborn.