The countess was not the woman to see
them without inquiry, and she inquired vigorously. She threatened,
stormed, and protested. She attempted even a raid upon the young lady's
jewel-box. But she was not successful. Lizzie snapped and snarled and held
her own, for at that time the match with Sir Florian was near its
accomplishment, and the countess understood too well the value of such a
disposition of her niece to risk it at the moment by any open rupture. The
little house in Brook Street--for the house was very small and very
comfortless--a house that had been squeezed in, as it were, between two
others without any fitting space for it--did not contain a happy family.
One bedroom, and that the biggest, was appropriated to the Earl of
Linlithgow, the son of the countess, a young man who passed perhaps five
nights in town during the year. Other inmate there was none besides the
aunt and the niece and the four servants, of whom one was Lizzie's own
maid. Why should such a countess have troubled herself with the custody of
such a niece? Simply because the countess regarded it as a duty. Lady
Linlithgow was worldly, stingy, ill-tempered, selfish, and mean.
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