‘That you are Humfrey’s ward?—my legacy from him? Good!’ said Honora, ratifying the inheritance with a caress, doubly precious to one so seldom fondled. ‘Though I am afraid,’ she added, ‘that Mr. Crabbe would not exactly recognize my claim.’
‘Oh, I don’t want you for what Mr. Crabbe can do for us, but it does make me feel right and at ease in telling you of what might otherwise seem too near home. But he was intended to have taken care of us all, and you always seem to me one with him—’
Phœbe stopped short, startled at the deep, bright, girlish blush on her friend’s cheek, and fearing to have said what she ought not; but Honor, recovering in a moment, gave a strange bright smile and tightly squeezed her hand. ‘One with him! Dear Phœbe, thank you. It was the most undeserved, unrequited honour of my life that he would have had it so. Yes, I see how you look at me in wonder, but it was my misfortune not to know on whom or what to set my affections till too late. No; don’t try to repent of your words. They are a great pleasure to me, and I delight to include you in the charges I had from him—the nice children he liked to meet in the woods.’
‘Ah! I wish I could remember those meetings. Robert does, and I do believe Robert’s first beginning of love and respect for what was good was connected with his fondness for Mr. Charlecote.’
‘I always regard Bertha as a godchild inherited from him, like Charlecote Raymond, whom I saw ordained last week. I could not help going out of my way when I found I might be present, and take his sister Susan with me.’
‘You went.’
‘Yes, Susan had been staying with her uncle at Sutton, and met me at Oxford. I am glad we were able to go. There was nothing that I more wished to have seen.’
Irrepressible curiosity could not but cause Phœbe to ask how lately Miss Raymond had been at Sutton, and as Miss Charlecote answered the question she looked inquisitively at her young friend, and each felt that the other was initiated. Whether the cousin ought to have confided to Miss Charlecote what she had witnessed at Sutton was an open question, but at least Honor knew what Phœbe burnt to learn, and was ready to detail it.
It was the old story of the parish priest taking pupils, and by dire necessity only half fulfilling conflicting duties, to the sacrifice of the good of all. Overworked between pupils and flock, while his wife was fully engrossed by children and household cares, the moment had not been perceived when their daughter became a woman, and the pupil’s sport grew to earnest. Not till Mervyn Fulmort had left Sutton for the University were they aware that he had treated Cecily as the object of his affection, and had promised to seek her as soon as he should be his own master. How much was in his power they knew not, but his way of life soon proved him careless of deserving her, and it was then that she became staid and careworn, and her youth had lost its bloom, while forced in conscience to condemn the companion of her girlhood, yet unable to take back the heart once bestowed, though so long neglected.
But when Mervyn, declaring himself only set at liberty by his father’s death, appeared at Sutton, Cecily did not waver, and her parents upheld her decision, that it would be a sin to unite herself to an irreligious man, and that the absence of principle which he had shown made it impossible for her to accept him.