“Don’t you like your uncle?” asked Una.
“No,” said Carrie, with some emphasis, “I don’t, but there are a great many people who do. Don’t fall in love with him, Amethyst; he will with you, directly he sees you.”
Carrie laughed as she gave this warning; but it struck both the shrewd, observant Haredales, that she had made a point of uttering it.
“I shall take the dogs for a walk,” she said, without waiting for an answer. “Poor things, they will be very dull when we are in London.”
“You should go too, Amethyst,” said Una, as Carrie went out; “you are pale. If you did your duty, you would be considering exactly what amount of exercise would give the right shade of pink to your cheeks.”
“I shall consider nothing of the kind,” said Amethyst, crossly. “Even my lady wouldn’t plan and scheme in that way. At least she does things because she likes them.”
“Darling, I did not mean to vex you,” said Una, distressed, as Amethyst started up and went over to the window, with an impetuous movement, unlike her ordinary self-restraint.
“Oh, not you, Una. But every one plans and schemes; Aunt Annabel does. I know what all this talking about ‘poor Charles’ means very well. She would do anything, in spite of all her religion, to ‘support the title,’ as she calls it. I’d rather live honestly for my own pleasure. But, there—we all plan and scheme, as I say, and make up our lives. And we can never make them as they were once intended to be.”
Her breast heaved and her eyes filled, as the thought forced itself upon her, that, let her success in life be what it would, it could never give her anything better, anything nearly so good as one hour with Lucian in the woods at Cleverley.
“That was Paradise,” she thought; “but I couldn’t live in it now!”