“Una will be coming on by that time; her mother wanted to bring her out now, the girls are getting too big to be about as children. No, if we’re to have Amethyst on our hands, which of course is uncommon bad luck, we’d better take her at her best. Cleverley’s not a bad neighbourhood—we could bring her out first in the country. I know her mother means to have her with her somehow this year. It won’t do to let her be permanently on our hands, now you haven’t the same prospect for her. You must see that, though how the deuce my lady will manage to get her frocks—”
“I’ll keep her, Haredale,” cried Miss Haredale, starting up. “I’ll keep her, somehow. A London season and a fashionable marriage is not the end of existence. She shall not have to go through the misery of difficulties about dress and other things, which I knew only too well I did not know what I was doing in coming here. Don’t expose her to all those shifts and contrivances?”
“You’re upset, Anna,” said Lord Haredale, “and no wonder!—By Jove! there’s nothing so upsetting as losing money, especially when you’ve had nothing to show for it!”
“Can you wonder,” said Miss Haredale, struggling with her feelings, “can you wonder that I shrink from exposing the child to—to so many temptations?”
“There’s nothing to hurt her,” said Lord Haredale easily. “She’ll never come in Blanche’s way; and Charles, curse him, never comes home at all. She’ll be with people quite of your own sort at Cleverley. Of course we’re quite aware of all you’ve done for her, I shouldn’t think of taking her away from you, in any other case. But come down and talk the matter over with my lady. Capital train at 4:30. Come for a couple of nights and see for yourself. You’ll find it all right enough for her. Come and see.”
“Well, I shall at least hear what her mother thinks,” said Miss Haredale, doubtfully; for in truth the mother was the chief subject of anxiety in her anxious mind. When eleven years before she had taken her niece to live with her, her object had been to make Amethyst’s girlhood as unlike as possible to her own.
Thirty years or so ago, Annabel Haredale had been a fine distinguished-looking girl, popular in the fast and reckless set which frequented the family place, Haredale, in the last days of her father’s life. Lord Haredale and his sons were racing men, and not at all particular as to which of their acquaintances they introduced to the family circle. All the men Annabel knew were fast and dissipated, and all the ladies of her set tolerated, and even liked, fastness and dissipation. She had very little education, and all her religion consisted of an occasional attendance at Haredale church in a gallery with arm-chairs and a fire; where she and her visitors laughed and talked at intervals, and quizzed the natives. She was, however, a kind and warm-hearted girl, affectionate to her unworthy relatives, and she did her best, according to her lights, to keep matters straight at Haredale, and to preserve her own self-respect. She had many admirers, but no chance of marriage offered itself which she felt herself able to accept. The family circumstances did not improve when the old Lord Haredale died. His eldest son was equally deep in debt, and had less strength of character and constitution to carry off his vices. Annabel withdrew herself and her fortune, and, freed from the family surroundings, she came across people of a different stamp; another education began for her, she fell under religious influences, made good friends, and settled down happily into a pleasant and useful life at Silverfold, a pretty village not far from London.
She did what she could to keep up a kindly intercourse with her brother, and made much of his son and daughter, being indeed very fond of the somewhat unpromising boy whom she would fain have regarded as the hope of the family, and, when his mother died, she did all she could to show him kindness. Lord Haredale, however, married again almost immediately, a young beauty, who proved very uncongenial to her husband’s sister.
When four little girls were added to the family, Miss Haredale had not much difficulty in getting the eldest put into her hands for education, and since then she had given Amethyst every advantage that she had missed herself.
The son and daughter of the first marriage had soon put themselves out of her reach, and were causes of increased difficulty and trouble. She had no reason to believe home-life desirable for Amethyst, or to regret having removed her from its influence. The younger sisters were not so brought up as to make her think the mother—whose right over her child must needs be recognised—a wise guide for a beautiful girl. A kindly woman, without much strength of purpose, she had, spite of later influences, never quite outgrown the code of her youth, and it had never occurred to her as possible that her brother’s daughter should not be “introduced” at eighteen in London, as she herself had been. She had felt it a duty, now that she could not herself give the girl this advantage, to let her have what opportunities her parents could give her.