The speaker was Miss Seyton. She stood looking down at her niece with an odd quiver in lip and voice, even while her tone was not altogether a sad one. Virginia sat in dismayed silence; she had been arranging a bunch of autumn leaves and berries to brighten up the dark old drawing-room, which bore many a trace of her presence in bits of needlework and tokens of pleasant occupation, though the house was duller and quieter than ever now that Mr Seyton’s rapidly failing health gave him the habits of an invalid, and that both the boys were absent. Miss Seyton looked more faded than ever, but she was kind and friendly with Virginia, even though she could not divest her voice of its sarcastic tone as she continued,—
“You are a person of consequence, and you ought to understand the state of the case.”
“That Roland means to sell Elderthwaite?” said Virginia, slowly.
“Yes. We can’t afford, Virginia, to make pretences to each other, and we know that it will come before many months. Then what are we to do?”
However much it went against Virginia to discuss the results of her father’s death, she felt that there was some truth in her aunt’s words, that they ought to be prepared for so great a change; and she had also learnt to practise great directness in dealing with Miss Seyton.
“I have sometimes supposed that you would live at the vicarage, Aunt Julia,” she said.
“Not if I have a penny to live on elsewhere,” replied Miss Seyton. “James and I were never friends, and I’ll not see the place in the hands of strangers. Besides, I’ve had a thirty years’ imprisonment, and I’d like my freedom. Look here—when I was a girl I was just like the others; I loved pleasure as well as they did, and had it too. I was as daring as ever a Seyton of them all. However, I meant to marry and live in the south, and I was quite good enough, my dear, for the man I was engaged to. Then he quarrelled with James, and that began the breach. I didn’t marry, as you may see, and when my father died my portion couldn’t be paid off without a sale, and things were in such a mess I had no power to claim it. So here I stayed, and, let me tell you, I’ve stopped up a good many holes, and been quite as great a blessing to my family as they deserved.”
Virginia laughed in spite of herself, though her answer was grave.
“Yes, I know that, now.”
“But now, d’ye see, Virginia, I’m tired of it. I’m only fifty, and it’ll go hard if I don’t get some pickings out of the sale of the estate. Do you know, we have some old cousins living in Bath, a Ruth and Virginia of another generation? I’m inclined to think I should like to go into society—to ‘come out,’ in fact, in a smart cap, and to live within reach of a circulating library and scandal. That’s my view, and that’s what I mean to aim at when the time comes. What do you say?”