At last the carriage which had gone to the station was here; not the waggonette on this occasion, but the real carriage itself, the carriage which was wont to toddle four miles an hour about the parish. “This is an honour meant for the prodigal daughter,” said Philip, as he took his seat. “If you had never been naughty, we should only have had the waggonette, and we then should have been there in half the time.” Mrs. Miles, when she heard the wheels on the gravel, was even yet uncertain where she would place herself. She was fluttered, moving about from the room into the hall and back, when the old butler spoke a careful word: “Go into the library, madam, and Mr. Philip will bring her to you there.” Then she obeyed the butler,—as she had probably never done in her life before.
Bessy, as soon as her step was off the carriage, ran very quickly into the house. “Where is my aunt?” she said. The butler was there showing the way, and in a moment she had thrown her arms round the old woman. Bessy had a way of making her kisses obligatory, from which Mrs. Miles had never been able to escape. Then, when the old woman was seated, Bessy was at once upon her knees before her. “Say that you love me, aunt. Say that at once! Say that first of all!”
“You know I love you.”
“I know I love you. Oh, I am so glad to have you again. It was so hard not to be with you when I thought that you were ill. I did not know how sick it would make me to be away from you.” Neither then nor at any time afterwards was there a word spoken on the one side or the other as to that declaration of enmity.
There was nothing then said in way of explanation. There was nothing perhaps necessary. It was clear to Bessy that she was received at Launay as Philip’s future wife,—not only by Mrs. Miles herself, but by the whole household,—and that all the honours of the place were to be awarded to her without stint. For herself that would have sufficed. To her any explanation of the circumstances which had led to a change so violent was quite unnecessary. But it was not so with Mrs. Miles herself. She could not but say some word in justification of herself,—in excuse rather than justification. She had Bessy into her bedroom that night, and said the word, holding between her two thin hands the hand of the girl she addressed. “You have known, Bessy, that I did not wish this.” Bessy muttered that she did know it. “And I think you knew why.”
“How could I help it, aunt?”
Upon this the old woman patted the hand. “I suppose he could not help it. And, if I had been a young man, I could not have helped it. I could not help it as I was, though I am an old woman. I think I am as foolish as he is.”
“Perhaps he is foolish, but you are not.”
“Well; I do not know. I have my misgivings about that, my dear. I had objects which I thought were sacred and holy, to which I had been wedded through many years. They have had to be thrust aside.”
“Then you will hate me!”