“I should have thought the place would have been full of ghosts.”
“I tried. I made the woman let me in, and I sat where poor Camilla used to talk to me, and I thought I was the better for facing it out. The question is whether Mrs. Poynsett will dislike it. She has a right to be consulted.”
Perhaps Cecil could not be gracious. Certainly, Raymond would have been thankful for even this admission.
“You wish me to find out?”
“If you would be so good. I would give it up at once if she has any feeling against it, and go somewhere else—and of course she has! She never can forget what I did!”
Rosamond caressed Cecil with that sweetness which saw everything in the most consoling manner; but when the poor young widow was out of sight, there was a revulsion of feeling.
“No, Mrs Poynsett must always feel that that wretched marriage broke her son’s heart, and murdered him!—murdered him!” said Rosamond to herself, clenching that soft fist of hers. “It ought not to be broached to her!”
But Julius—when she stated it to him rather less broadly, but still saying that she did not know whether she could bear the sight of Cecil, except when she was before her eyes, and how could his mother endure her at all—did not see it in the same light. He thought Sirenwood gave duties to Cecil, and that she ought not to be hindered from fulfilling them. And he said his mother was a large-minded woman, and not likely to have that personal bitterness towards Cecil that both the ladies seemed to expect, as her rival in her son’s affections, and the means of his unhappiness and death.
He was right; Mrs. Poynsett was touched by finding that Cecil clung to them rather than to her sublime family, and especially by the design as to little Raymond, though she said that must never be mentioned; nothing must bind so young a creature as Cecil, who really did not know what love was at all.
“She is afraid the sight of her is distressing to you,” said Rosamond.