Phœbe was left to the vacancy of the orphaned house, to a blank where her presence had been gladness, and to relief more sad than pain, in parting with her favourite brother, and seeing him out of danger of provoking or being provoked.
To have been the cause of strife and object of envy weighed like guilt on her heart, and the tempest that had tossed her when most needing peace and soothing, left her sore and suffering. She did not nurse her grief, and was content that her mother should be freed from the burthen of existence that had of late been so heavy; but the missing the cherished recipient of her care was inevitable, and she was not of a nature to shake off dejection readily, nor to throw sorrow aside in excitement.
Mervyn felt as though he had caught a lark, and found it droop instead of singing. He was very kind, almost oppressively so; he rode or drove with her to every ruin or view esteemed worth seeing, ordered books for her, and consulted her on improvements that pained her by the very fact of change. She gave her attention sweetly and gratefully, was always at his call, and amused his evenings with cards or music, but she felt herself dull and sad, and saw him disappointed in her.
Then she tried bringing in Bertha as entertainment for both, but it was a downright failure. Bertha was far too sharp and pert for an elder brother devoid both of wit and temper, and the only consequence was that she fathomed his shallow acquirements in literature and the natural sciences, and he pronounced her to be eaten up with conceit, and the most intolerable child he ever saw—an irremediable insult to a young woman of fifteen; nor could Bertha be brought forward without disappointing Maria, whose presence Mervyn would not endure, and thus Phœbe was forced to yield the point, and keep in the background the appendages only tolerated for her sake.
Greatly commiserating Bertha’s weariness of the schoolroom, she tried to gratify the governess and please her sisters by resuming her studies; but the motive of duty and obedience being gone, these were irksome to a mind naturally meditative and practical, and she found herself triumphed over by Bertha for forgetting whether Lucca were Guelf or Ghibelline, putting oolite below red sandstone, or confusing the definition of ozone. She liked Bertha to surpass her; but inattention she regarded as wrong in itself, as well as a bad example, and her apologies were so hearty as quite to affect Miss Fennimore.
Mervyn’s attentions wore off with the days of seclusion. By the third week he was dining out, by the fourth he was starting for Goodwood, half inviting Phœbe to come with him, and assuring her that it was just what she wanted to put her into spirits again. Poor Phœbe—when Mr. Henderson talking to Miss Fennimore, and Bertha at the same time insisting on Decandolle’s system to Miss Charlecote, had seemed to create a distressing whirl and confusion!
Miss Fennimore smiled, both with pleasure and amusement, as Phœbe asked her permission to walk to the Holt, and be fetched home by the carriage at night.
‘Don’t laugh at me,’ said Phœbe. ‘I am so glad to have some one’s leave to ask.’
‘I will not laugh, my dear, but I will not help you to reverse our positions. It is better we should both be accustomed to them.’
‘It seems selfish to take the carriage for myself,’ said Phœbe; ‘but I think I have rather neglected Miss Charlecote for Mervyn, and I believe she would like to have me alone.’