“Oh, my dear child,” cried Miss Haredale, with agitation inexplicable to Amethyst, “no earthly guide is always enough.”
“Of course I know that,” said Amethyst, simply, and with surprise. “But I can’t go away from that other guidance, you know, auntie. That is the same everywhere. If one really wishes to know what is right, there is never any doubt about it. There is always a way out of a puzzle at school; and of course things there are sometimes puzzling.”
The words were spoken in the most matter-of-course way, as by one who believed herself to have found by experience the truth of what she had been constantly taught, and who did not suppose that any one else could doubt it.
Miss Haredale said nothing; but whether rightly or wrongly, she never gave Amethyst a clearer warning, or more definite advice than this.
Chapter Three.
Neighbours.
Market Cleverley was a dull little town, within easy reach of London, but on another line from Silverfold. The great feature of its respectable old-fashioned street was the high-built wall and handsome iron gates of Cleverley Hall, a substantial house of dark brick of the style prevalent in the earlier part of the last century. Nearly opposite the Hall was the Rectory, smaller in size, but similar in age and colour; and, beyond the large, long, square-towered church which stood at the end of the street, were the fields and gardens of Ashfield Mount, a large white modern villa built on a rising ground, which commanded a view of flat, fertile country, and of long, white roads, stretching away between neatly trimmed hedges.
The exchange of the dull but innocuous Admiral and Mrs Parry, at Cleverley Hall, for a large family of undoubted rank and position, who were supposed to be equally handsome and ill-behaved, and to belong to the extreme of fashion, could not fail to be exciting to the mother of two growing girls, and of a grown-up son, whose good looks and fair fortune were not to be despised. Mrs Leigh rented Ashfield from the guardian uncle of the owner, Miss Carisbrooke, a girl still under age, and had lived there for many years. Her son’s place, Toppings, in a northern county, had been let during his long minority.