One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
Disrobed, she knocked at the door.
‘I have called to you twice,’ Dorothea said; and she looked
a motive for the call.
‘What is it?’ said Virginia, with faltering sweetness, with a
terrible divination.
The movement of a sigh was made. ‘Are you aware of anything,
dear?’
Virginia was taken with the contrary movement of a sniff.
But the fear informing it prevented it from being venturesome.
Doubt of the pure atmosphere of their bed-chamber,
appeared to her as too heretic even for the positive essay. In
affirming, that she was not aware of anything, her sight fell
on Tasso. His eyeballs were those of a little dog that has been
awfully questioned.
‘It is more than a suspicion,’ said Dorothea; and plainly
now, while open to the seductions of any pleasing infidel
testimony, her nose in repugnance convicted him absolutely.
Virginia’s nose was lowered a few inches; it inhaled and
stopped midway. ‘You must be mistaken, dear. He never …’
‘But are you insensible to the …’ Dorothea’s eyelids fainted.
Virginia dismissed the forlornest of efforts at incredulity.
A whiff of Tasso had smitten her. ‘Ah!’ she exclaimed and fell
away. ‘Is it Tasso! How was it you noticed nothing before
undressing, dear?’
‘Thinking of what we have gone through to-night! I forgot
him. At last the very strange … The like of it I have not
ever! … And upon that thick coat! And, dear, it is late. We
are in the morning hours.’
‘But, my dear-Oh, dear, what is to be done with him?’
That was the crucial point for discussion. They had no
servant to give them aid; Manton, they could not dream of
disturbing. And Tasso’s character wag in the estimate; he hated
washing; it balefully depraved his temper; and not only, creature
of habit that he was, would he decline to lie down anywhere
save in their bedroom, he would lament, plead, insist
unremittingly, if excluded; terrifying every poor invalid of
the house. Then again, were they at this late hour to dress
themselves, and take him downstairs, and light a fire in the
kitchen, and boil sufficient water to give him a bath and
scrubbing? Cold water would be death to him. Besides, he
would ring out his alarum for the house to hear, pour out all
his poetry, poor dear, as Mr. Posterley called it, at a touch of
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