But Miss Shuttleworth refused, and unaided clambered up to the back seat, presenting a liberal allowance of very spare leg and white cotton stocking to the enraptured view of Miss Bamford’s young ladies, who, from the work-room on the second floor, were gazing down upon the proceedings with the intensest interest, and speculating with a burning curiosity as to who that gentleman could be who had driven up with Miss Anita Bolton of the Abbey; who handed her into the phaeton with such assiduous care, and bent over her with such a look of attention as he spoke a word to her before driving off. ‘He looks like a foreigner,’ and ‘He’s very handsome,’ were the most definite and the most general conclusions arrived at. Meantime the phaeton drove off, and arrived at the Abbey without further misadventure. Miss Shuttleworth intimated her intention of coming in and staying supper. Jerome whispered to Nita: ‘You will go upstairs and take some rest before supper, _for my sake_! And I will find Mr. Bolton and tell him: no, I will not alarm him too much. Do not fear. Will you promise to rest?’ ‘Yes,’ said Nita, faintly, as he helped her down, and she and her aunt went upstairs together. [Illustration] CHAPTER VII. THE WORKING OF THE SPELL. ‘Not that the play is worth much, but it is finely acted.... But that which did please me more than anything in the whole world was the musique when the angell comes down; which is so sweet that it ravished me.... Neither then nor all the evening I was able to think of anything, but remained all night transported.’—PEPYS’ _Diary_. REST and quiet, it seemed, were not to fall immediately to Nita’s lot. She conducted Miss Shuttleworth to her room, and sat down in an easy-chair while that lady made her slow and lengthy, if not elaborate, toilette for the evening. ‘What’s the meaning of all this, Nita?’ ‘All what, aunt?’ ‘This driving about with young Wellfield, and having accidents, and losing your temper—_you_, of all people, and insulting your old aunt, and looking miserable?’ ‘I don’t know why you should seek to attach any meaning at all to it. I was driving carelessly, when we suddenly met a traction-engine coming up the hill; the horses bolted, and but for Mr. Wellfield’s getting the reins into his own hands—but for his courage and coolness, we should both have been dead now. Surely that is enough to unnerve anyone!’ ‘Then if you were so unnerved, what induced you to go to the bonnet-shop in Clyderhow?’ ‘I overrated my strength, I suppose, and in the joy of being safe imagined myself less shaken than I really was.’ ‘Humph!’ Miss Shuttleworth went to the drawer in Nita’s wardrobe, which was sacred to the caps she always wore at the Abbey. Looking through her store, she carefully selected a yellow and green one; the most intrinsically hideous and extrinsically least suited to her style of beauty of any of the collection, and then she returned to the glass to put it on.