Bildungsromans; Love stories; Young women -- England -- Fiction
Miss Marjoribanks, as was natural, took no notice of this childish fury.
She was sitting just where she had been sitting all the evening, within
sight of the street lamp and the organ-grinder, and Miss Jane Hemmings
at the staircase window;--just where Barbara had placed her, and where
that young woman calculated on finding her, when she made a promenade of
triumph up the partially lighted street by the side of her clandestine
suitor. Perhaps Barbara had seen Miss Jane as well, and knew that public
opinion was thus watching over her; but at all events she was not at all
ashamed of herself, or indignant at being spied upon. On the contrary,
it was a kind of apotheosis for Barbara, only second to the grand and
crowning triumph which would be accomplished in Carlingford Church under
the shadow of that veil of real Brussels, which grew more and more real
every day. Thus neither the actors in the drama, nor the principal
spectator, were in the smallest degree disturbed by horror or shame or
sense of guilt, excepting always the fanciful little Rose, who suffered
for everybody; who could have wished that the earth would open and
swallow up Barbara and her lover; who could have slaughtered Lucilla on
the spot, and given herself over to any kind of torture for her
treachery. Naturally nobody paid any sort of attention to Rose. Barbara,
for her part, took her admirer's arm in the twilight with a swelling of
exultation, which the gaining of the very highest prize in the
department of ornamental art could scarcely have conveyed to the bosom
of the little artist; and Lucilla put back her small assailant softly
with her hand, and smoothed down her ruffled plumes.
"My dear, it is Miss Hemmings that is spying," said Lucilla; "and poor
Barbara would be so disappointed if I were to go away from the window.
Have patience just a little longer--there's a dear. It is all exactly as
I thought."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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