‘Not exactly,’ said Mrs. Edmonstone, with the odd sort of laugh with which even the most sensitive people, in the height of their troubles, reply to anything ludicrous; ‘but really,’ she continued, ‘every idea of mine is so turned upside-down, that I don’t know what to think of anybody.’
‘We always knew Laura to be his slave and automaton. He is so infallible in her eyes, that no doubt she thought her silence an act of praiseworthy resolution.’
‘She was a mere child, poor dear,’ said her mother; ‘only eighteen! Yet Amy was but a year older last summer. How unlike! She must have known what she was doing.’
‘Not with her senses surrendered to him, without volition of her own. I wonder by what magnetism he allowed her to tell?’
‘She has gone through a great deal, poor child, and I am afraid there is much more for her to suffer, whether he recovers or not.’
‘He will recover’ said Charles, with the decided manner in which people prophesy the restoration of those they dislike, probably from a feeling that they must not die, till there is more charity in their opinion of them.
‘Your father will be so grieved.’
‘Well, I suppose we must begin to make the best of it,’ said Charles. ‘She has been as good as married to him these four years, for any use she has been to us; it has been only the name of the thing, so he had better—’
‘My dear Charlie, what are you talking of? You don’t imagine they can marry?’
‘They will some time or other, for assuredly neither will marry any one else. You will see if Guy does not take up the cause, and return Philip’s meddling—which, by the bye, is now shown to have been more preposterous still—by setting their affairs in order for them.’