“It’s very clever of him to have got his debts paid. I can’t think how he has done it,” said a slow, high voice from the end of the long room.
“Tory!” exclaimed Lady Haredale, “what are you doing there?”
“I’m learning a German verb, mother,” said Tory, standing up. “Don’t you think that, as our brother is coming home for the first time, Kat and I might dine down-stairs? We won’t speak unless we’re spoken to.”
“You had much better go up-stairs and finish your lessons,” said Amethyst, who preferred Tory’s absence at critical moments.
“Now don’t try to suppress us, Amethyst. It isn’t worthy of you. It isn’t, indeed,” said Tory, holding the end of her long tail of hair, and arranging the ribbon on it, with an absurdly childish look.
“Well,” said Lady Haredale, “as there are only the Grattans and Mr Carisbrooke coming, I don’t see why you should not come in.—But, as I was saying, we must try to make it pleasant and home-like for Charles. He has not been all he should have been, but we must forget that.”
“Yes, we know all about it, mother, all of us,” said Tory,—“except Carrie.”
“Carrie is one of us now,” said Lady Haredale, “so we won’t make a stranger of her.”
Carrie, who adored Lady Haredale, smiled and coloured as she ran away to dress for dinner; while Amethyst, as she too went up-stairs, remembered the conversation they had held at Silverfold, and thought it strange that Mr Oliver Carisbrooke and Charles Haredale should both make their first visit on the same day.
Amethyst, like her mother, was “enjoying herself very much.” She did inherit the same liking for life, and for the pleasant things of life, and, in spite of the occasional pressure of the past and of the future, it was not wonderful that the present was enchanting to her. A cup, rare, sweet, and intoxicating, was held to her lips, it was something to taste so fine a flavour.