The
release of her fine hair, which fell in natural waves about her stately
neck, made her look nearly ten years younger than she was, for by this
time she must have been eight-and-twenty. The ladies of the Carne race,
as their pictures showed (until they were sold to be the grandmothers
of dry-salters), had always been endowed with shapely necks, fit
columns for their small round heads. And this young lady's hair, with no
constraint but that of a narrow band across the forehead, clustered and
gleamed like a bower of acanthus round that Parian column.
Mr. Shargeloes, having obeyed his orders always to dine early, was
thrilled with a vision of poetry and romance, as he crossed the first
square of the carpet. The lady sat just where the light fell best from a
filtered sunbeam to illumine her, without entering into the shady parts;
and the poetry of her attitude was inspired by some very fine poetry
upon her lap. "I don't care what the doctors say, I shall marry that
girl," said Mr. Shargeloes to himself.
He was a man who knew his own mind, and a man with that gift makes
others know it. Miss Twemlow clenched in the coat upon his back the nail
she had driven through his heart, by calling him, at every other breath,
"Colonel Shargeloes." He said he was not that; but she felt that he was,
as indeed every patriotic man must be. Her contempt for every man
who forsook his country in this bitter, bitter strait was at once so
ruthless and so bewitching that he was quite surprised into confessing
that he had given 10,000 pounds, all in solid gold, for the comfort of
the Royal Volunteers, as soon as the autumnal damps came on.
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