“But you don’t really wish it, Dulcie?”
“I don’t know what I wish,” Dulcibel answered, half crying. “Only I am out of patience with the whole affair; and I don’t like to see wickedness successful; and I haven’t a notion how to get my things packed in time, and I hate travelling all night. But I suppose it has to be.”
* * * * * * *
The search for Joan’s mother, carried on with a vigorous disregard of expenditure of time and money, proved futile. She had managed her retreat cleverly. Joan became from that time a permanent prótegé of George and Dulcibel.
[CHAPTER VI.]
DAUGHTER OF THE HOUSE.
SEVENTEEN years had passed away, bringing and leaving changes with them as they came and went. But the changes had at Woodleigh Hall been gentle and gradual in kind. George Rutherford dwelt there still as master, and Dulcibel as mistress. No earthquake had shaken the foundation of Dulcibel’s being. They had lived on year after year, feeling themselves and things around to be always much the same; only of course everybody was growing a little older. And Joan was a daughter of the house—not the daughter, since they had a child of their own. Somehow Joan Brooke always took her stand as the eldest daughter, although of course the position belonged by right to her junior in years, Nessie Rutherford. But Nessie was not self-asserting, and Joan undoubtedly was. Nessie did not mind being second, and Joan did. Dulcibel might object for Nessie; but that was a different matter.
Joan never seemed to realize her own true condition in life, as a forsaken waif, disowned or unknown by her own relations, and dependent on strangers. She no more thought of George Rutherford as a stranger, or of herself as his dependent, than if he and she had been veritable father and daughter.
George Rutherford was the best of husbands, the kindest of fathers. But there were sides to his nature which had no chance of expanding towards Dulcibel or Nessie; and in those directions the companionship of Joan proved especially satisfying.
Joan habitually called George and Dulcibel “father” and “mother.” She had been brought up to do so; and nothing pleased her better than being taken for “Miss Rutherford.” The very word “Brooke” called a frown to her face.