"Never mind," she said to herself, as though she had been encouraging another person; "never mind, it is only for six months. She will always be civil to me, and it can't last."
She was right; Mrs. Carteret always was civil to her. She was a woman in whom cunning and caution were at least as strong as temper, and she took counsel of both in this instance. She was by no means free from an uneasy suspicion that, if Margaret had formed a contrary determination, her influence with her father would have outweighed that which she herself could have exerted.
It behoved her, therefore, to be thankful that the occasion for testing that unpleasantly-important point had not arisen, and to confine her tactics to such consistently-ceremonious treatment of Margaret as should keep her position as only a guest constantly before her eyes, and maintain her resolution by the aid of her pride; while all should be so contrived as to avoid attracting the attention of her absent-minded husband.
Mrs. Carteret conquered her temper, therefore--an operation in which she found the counting of the stitches of her everlasting fancy-work afforded her a good deal of assistance--and, after a short pause, took up a collateral branch of the same subject.
Margaret had dismissed Rose Moore, and the girl had gone on her journey with a weight at her heart which she would have hardly believed possible, seeing that she was going home. But she had come to love Margaret very much, and she was very imperfectly consoled for parting with her by the distant hope which the young widow held out of a future meeting.
"You will be married, and away in a house of your own, my dear girl, very soon, and you will not care much about anything else then; but I promise you, if ever I want you very much, Rose, I will send for you. I don't think I ever can want you, in all my life, as much as I wanted you when you came to me; and of course you never can want me; your life is laid out for you too securely for that."
"None of us can tell that," said Rose Moore; "who knows?"
"Well, of course no one knows," said Margaret; "but it looks like it. However, we shall never forget one another, Rose, and if either can help the other, the one who can will." And with this understanding they parted.
Mrs. Carteret had never taken any notice of Rose Moore, who, in her turn, had held the lady of the house in slight reverence. Mrs. Carteret had a constitutional aversion to the Irish. She considered them half-civilised beings, with a natural turn for murder, a natural unfitness for domestic service, and an objectionable predilection for attending the ceremonial observances of their religion.
As an Irishwoman, then. Rose Moore was antipathetic to her; and as a devoted though humble friend of her stepdaughter's, she was something more. The Irish girl's bright-hearted love and sympathy for the young widow was positively repulsive to Mrs. Carteret, because there was a reproach in it.