'Not to say a great deal,' said the Doctor. 'Well, I am not going to pity you; for I think you can feel to-day that most of us would be glad to be in your place!'
'I am very glad,' said Leonard.
'You remember that child's parents? No, you have grown so old, that I am always forgetting what a boy you ought to be; but if you had ever seen the tenderness of his father, and that sunbeam of a Meta, you would know all the more how we bless you for what you have spared them. Leonard, if anything had been needed to do so, you have won to yourself such a brother in Norman as you have in Aubrey!'
Meantime Ethel was soothing Gertrude, to whom the shock had been in proportion to the triumphal heights of her careless gaiety. Charles Cheviot had come in while his wife was restoring her; and he had plainly said what no one else would have intimated to the spoilt darling—that the whole accident had been owing to her recklessness, and that he had always expected some fatal consequences to give her a lesson!
Gertrude had been fairly cowed by such unwonted treatment; and when he would only take her home on condition of composure and self-command, her trembling limbs obliged her to accept his arm, and he subdued her into meek silence, and repression of all agitation, till she was safe in her room, when she took a little bit of revenge upon Mary by crying her heart out, and declaring it was very cruel of Charles, when she did not mean it.
And Mary, on her side, varied between assurances that Charles did not mean it, and that he was quite right—the sister now predominating in her, and now the wife.
'Mean what?' said Ethel, sitting down among them before they were aware.
'That—that it was all my fault!' burst out Gertrude. 'If it was, I don't see what concern it is of his!'
'But, Daisy dear, he is your brother!'
'I've got plenty of brothers of my own! I don't count those people-in-law—'