‘I know you will be harder to all for living in needless discomfort, and that you will be gentler to all for constantly meeting tokens of your sister’s affection. Had you sought these comforts for yourself, the case would be different; but, Robert, candidly, which of you is the self-pleasing, which the mortified one, at this moment?’
Robert could not but look convicted as his eyes fell on the innocent face, with the tears just kept back by strong effort, and the struggling smile of pardon.
‘Never mind, Robin,’ said Phœbe, as she saw his air of vexation; ‘I know you never meant unkindness. Do as you think right, only pray think of what Miss Charlecote says.’
‘She has one thing more to say,’ added Honor. ‘Do you think that throwing aside Phœbe’s little services will make you fitter to go among the little children?’
There was no answer, but a reluctant approach to a smile gave Phœbe courage to effect her restorations, and her whispered ‘You will not disturb them?’ met with an affirmative satisfactory to herself.
Perhaps he felt as of old, when the lady of the Holt had struck him for his cruelty to the mouse, or expelled him for his bad language. The same temper remained, although self-revenge had become the only outlet. He knew what it was that he had taken for devoted self-denial.
‘Yes, Robin,’ were Miss Charlecote’s parting words, as she went back to days of her own long past. ‘Wilful doing right seldom tends to good, above all when it begins by exaggeration of duty.’
And Robert was left with thoughts such as perchance might render him a more tractable subordinate for Mr. Parsons, instead of getting into training for the Order of St. Dominic.
Phœbe had to return less joyfully than she had gone forth. Her first bright star of anticipation had faded, and she had partaken deeply of the griefs of the two whom she loved so well. Not only had she to leave the one to his gloomy lodgings in the City, and the toil that was to deaden suffering, but the other must be parted with at the station, to return to the lonely house, where not even old Ponto would meet her—his last hour having, to every one’s grief, come in her absence.
Phœbe could not bear the thought of that solitary return, and even at the peril of great disappointment to her sisters, begged to sleep that first night at the Holt, but Honor thanked her, and laughed it off: ‘No, no! my dear, I am used to be alone, and depend upon it, there will be such an arrear of farm