Gynecocracy

I admit that I did not like the idea, but there were many counterpoising considerations. In what intimacy with this charming woman I should spend the time! Had she not declared it would be passed principally between her own legs? What, after all, did the rest matter?

And Ellen-I wondered what she would be like; whether she would be a termagant. Her husband's niece! How could a Duke's granddaughter be lady's maid to her uncle's wife? But then, I recollected, she might be the niece of a sister-in-law in uncertain circumstances.

Here, however, was Ridlington Court at last, a very substantial reality, and I was glad to sweep up its spacious avenue under the old elms, the sycamores, and limes, in the carriage of its mistress.

She was not sufficiently romantic to suit the scene, but possibly her very want of sentimentality and her breezy, matter-of-fact air, and the absence of womanliness she affected, formed an inspiriting contest.

The undulating glades of the park dotted with clumps of oak, and here and there with single great trees in the shade of which the fallow deer browsed and lay, presented a charming picture of rural peace and plenty.

At some distance I saw the sea spread out like a cool sheet of silver in the sunshine, its surface occasionally ruffled by the movement and scream of the water hens and other waterfowl.

The house itself was large, low, and appeared to cover an immense expanse of ground, but it had no architectural pretensions of any sort. It looked comfortable but ugly, in fact like a great overgrown farmhouse with too many windows. In the pleasure grounds some fountains and statues alone redeemed its character. I noticed with a qualm the presence of a few silver birches, peculiarly a lady's tree-but a rare one in these parts.

When we arrived we went straight up to Lady Alfred Ridlington's apartments and into her bedroom.

As she took off her things, I was introduced to Ellen.

The manservants in the hall, the silvery haired butler, the three or four stately footmen, and my Lord's man in plain clothes, who gave Alice a message from her husband as she passed up the stairs with me, gave me a totally different impression from that which I had received upon my entry to Downlands, where, in the house, there were no menservants at all.

The men looked at me and I felt uncomfortable, but soon found myself lifted out of the life of the house, and entirely confined to milady's portion of it. In fact, my very existence there might have been, and except for my passage through the hall probably was, unknown to everyone in the establishment except to its mistress and to Ellen.

Ellen was a gipsy like girl with very dark eyes and smooth blue-black hair, thin, and of dark complexion, observant but reticent, with hot temper and very little good humour. Her laugh was cold and not hearty, and I dreaded her.

She possessed an utterly unsympathetic nature, and while no one could be more punctilious or attentive in her duties, she remained always closely wrapt in herself. There was an inner Ellen, to which no one penetrated or seemed to care to penetrate. I concluded she had been crossed or disappointed in love. Her nature had evidently been originally a warm-hearted and affectionate one, which some hard black frost had congealed into thick-set ice that nothing could break up.

Now, although I wore a very plain black dress, my underclothing was of the richest descriptions.

When I had been introduced to Ellen, Alice made me lift up my skirts, to shew her my heavily laced drawers; there were triple rows of lace round the knees, and a long frill of it up the back of the legs.

Ellen had glanced at me in a very equivocal fashion when she first saw me. When I coyly displayed my garments to her, and attitudinised with first one shapely leg and then the other, her eyes became thoughtful and flashed.

"You must let me see better for myself," she said, leading me to a sofa upon which she threw me backwards. Her hand very soon set her doubts at rest. "So he is a boy," she exclaimed to Lady Alice who was nonchalantly arranging her hair at the glass.

The manner in which she had felt me was so cold and passionless that it had not aroused the least excitement.

"Yes," answered Alice, "he is a boy to be broken in to petticoats. He is to attend to me, to be my maid during his visit, and under you-under your orders."

"I understand," answered Ellen grimly, giving me a stern look which made me feel very uncomfortable.

Alice presently went down to lunch and left me with Ellen. I helped her to unpack Lady Alfred's things and she gave me various dresses to brush and boots and shoes to clean. She showed me our workroom, where, she told me, we should also have our meals-a very plainly furnished apartment, but with a pleasant view across the park.