In personal appearance Eleanor Lees is the reverse of all this; being of dark complexion, brown-haired, black-eyed, with a figure slender and petite . Witha she is pretty; but it is only prettiness a word inapplicable to her kinswoman, who is pronouncedly beautiful.
Equally unlike are they in mental characteristics; the first-named being free of speech, courageous, just a trifle fast, and possibly a little imperious. The other of a reserved, timid disposition, and habitually of subdued mien, as befits her station; for in this there is also disparity between them again a contrast. Both are orphans; but it is an orphanage under widely different circumstances and conditions: the one heiress to an estate worth some ten thousand pounds per annum, the other inheriting nought save an old family name indeed, left without other means of livelihood than what she may derive from a superior education she has received.
Notwithstanding their inequality of fortune, and the
very distant relationship for they are not even near as cousins the rich girl behaves towards the poor one as though they were sisters. No one seeing them stroll arm-in-arm through the shrubbery, and hearing them hold converse in familiar, affectionate tones, would suspect the little dark damsel to be the paid "companion" of the lady by her side. Yet in such capacity is she residing at Llangorren Court.
It is just after the hour of breakfast, and they have come forth in morning robes of light muslin dresses suitable to the day and the season. Two handsome ponies are upon the lawn, its herbage dividing their attention with the horns of a pet stag, which now and then threaten to assail them.
All three, soon as perceiving the ladies, trot towards them; the ponies stretching out their necks to be patted, the cloven-hoofed creature equally courting caresses. They look especially to Miss Wynn, who is more their mistress.
On this particular morning she does not seem in the humour for dallying with them; nor has she brought out their usual allowance of lump sugar; but, after a touch with her delicate fingers, and a kindly exclamation, passes on, leaving them behind, to all appearance disappointed.
"Where are you going, Gwen?" asks the companion, seeing her step out straight, and apparently with thoughts preoccupied. Their arms are now disunited, the little incident with the animals having separated them.
"To the summer-house," is the response. "I wish to have a look at the river. It should show fine this bright morning."
And so it does; as both perceive after entering the pavilion, which commands a view of the valley, with a reach of the river above the latter, under the sun, glistening like freshly polished silver.
Gwen views it through a glass a binocular she has brought out with her; this of itself proclaiming some purpose aforethought, but not confided to the companion. It is only after she has been long holding it steadily to her eye, that the latter fancies there must be some object within its field of view more interesting than the Wye's water, or the greenery on its banks.
"What is it?" she naïvely asks. "You see something?"
"Only a boat," answers Gwen, bringing down the glass with a guilty look, as if conscious of being caught. "Some tourist, I suppose, making down to Tintern Abbey like as not a London cockney."
The young lady is telling a "white lie." She knows the occupant of that boat is nothing of the kind. From London he may be she cannot tell but certainly no sprig of cockneydom unlike it as Hyperion to the Satyr; at least so she thinks. But she does not give her thought to the companion; instead, concealing it, she adds,
"How fond those town people are of touring it upon our Wye!"
"Can you wonder at that?" asks Ellen. "Its scenery is so grand I should say, incomparable; nothing equal to it in England."
"I don't wonder," says Miss Wynn, replying to the question. "I'm only a little bit vexed seeing them there. It's like the desecration of some sacred stream, leaving scraps of newspapers in which they wrap their sandwiches, with other picnicing débris on its banks! To say nought of one's having to encounter the rude fellows that in these degenerate days go a-rowing shopboys from the towns, farm labourers, colliers, hauliers, all sorts. I've half a mind to set fire to the Gwendoline , burn her up, and never again lay hand on an oar."
Ellen Lees laughs incredulously as she makes rejoinder.
"It would be a pity," she says, in serio-comic tone. "Besides, the poor people are entitled to a little recreation. They don't have too much of it."
"Ah, true," rejoins Gwen, who, despite her grandeeism, is neither Tory nor aristocrat. "Well, I've not yet decided on that little bit of incendiarism, and shan't burn the Gwendoline at all events not till we've had another row out of her."
Not for a hundred pounds would she set fire to that boat, and never in her life was she less thinking of such a thing. For just then she has other views regarding the pretty pleasure craft, and intends taking seat on its thwarts within less than twenty minutes' time.