Laura's tone was rather dry. She was sitting on the edge of Polly's bed, with her arm round one of its oaken posts. Her cheek was laid against the post, and her eyes had been wandering about a good deal while Polly talked. Till the mention of Helbeck. Then her attention came back. And during Polly's account of the incident in Whinthorpe Lane, she began to frown. What bigotry, after all! As to the story of young Williams--it was very perplexing--she would get the truth of it out of Augustina. But it was extraordinary that it should be so well known in this upland farm--that it should make a kind of link--a link of hatred--between Mr. Helbeck and the Masons. After her movement of wild sympathy with Mrs. Mason, she realised now, as Polly's chatter slipped on, that she understood her cousins almost as little as she did Helbeck.
Nay, more. The picture of Helbeck stoned and abused by these rough, uneducated folk had begun to rouse in her a curious sympathy. Unwillingly her mind invested him with a new dignity.
So that when Polly told a rambling story of how Mr. Bayley, after the street fight, had met Mr. Helbeck at a workhouse meeting and had placed his hands behind his back when Mr. Helbeck offered his own, Laura tossed her head.
"What a ridiculous man!" she said disdainfully; "what can it matter to Mr. Helbeck whether Mr. Bayley shakes hands with him or not?"
Polly looked at her in some astonishment, and dropped the subject. The elder woman, conscious of plainness and inferiority, was humbly anxious to please her new cousin. The girl's delicate and characteristic physique, her clear eyes and decided ways, and a certain look she had in conversation--half absent, half critical--which was inherited from her father,--all of them combined to intimidate the homely Polly, and she felt perhaps less at ease with her visitor as she saw more of her.
Presently they stood before some old photographs on Polly's mantelpiece; Polly looked timidly at her cousin.
"Doan't yo think as Hubert's verra handsome?" she said.
And taking up one of the portraits, she brushed it with her sleeve and handed it to Laura.
"No--o," she said coolly, "not really handsome."
"There's not a mony gells aboot here as doan't coe Hubert handsome," she said with emphasis.