"Geoffrey was here to-day; he paid us quite a long visit."
"Did he?" said Charley; "and is he all right?"
"O yes," said Til, "he is very well; and he told us all about his pictures; and, do you know, he's going to put baby and the nurse into a corner group, among the people on the Esplanade,--only he must wait till baby's back is stronger, and his neck leaves off waggling, so as to paint him properly, sitting up nice and straight in nurse's arms." And then Miss Til ran on with a great deal of desultory talk, concerning Geoffrey, and his description of the presents, and what he had said about Lord Caterham and Annie Maurice. Charley listened to her with more seriousness than he usually displayed; and Mrs. Ludlow sighed and shook her head at intervals, until, as the conversation settled into a dialogue, she gradually dropped asleep. Then Til's manner changed, and she lowered her voice, and asked Charley anxiously if he had come to tell her any bad news.
"If you have," she said, "aid that it can be kept from mamma, tell it at once, and let me keep it from her."
With much true delicacy and deep sympathy, Charley then related to Til the scene which had taken place between himself, Bowker, and Stompff,--and told her that Bowker had talked the matter over with him and they had agreed that it was not acting fairly by Geoffrey to allow him to remain in ignorance of the floating rumours, injurious to his wife's character, which were rife among their friends. How Stompff had heard of Margaret's having fainted in Lord Caterham's room, Charley could not tell; that he had heard it, and had heard a mysterious cause assigned to it, he knew. That he could have known any thing about an incident apparently so trivial proved that the talk had become tolerably general, and was tending to the injury of Geoffrey, not only in his self...respect and in his feelings, but in his prospects. Charley was much more alarmed and uneasy, and much more grieved for Geoffrey, than even Bowker; for he had reason to fear that no supposition derogatory to Margaret's antecedents could surpass the reality. He alone knew where and how the acquaintance between Geoffrey and Margaret had begun, and he was therefore prepared to estimate the calamity of such a marriage correctly. He did not exactly know what he had intended to say to Matilda Ludlow; he had come to the house with a vague idea that something ought to be done;--that Til ought to speak to her sister-in-law,--a notion which in itself proved Charley Potts to be any thing but a wise man,--ought to point out to her that her indifference to her husband was at once ungrateful to him and shortsighted to her own interest; and that people, notably his employer, were talking about it. Charley Potts was not exactly an adept in reading character, and the real Margaret was a being such as he could neither have understood nor believed in; therefore the crudity, wildness, and inapplicability of this scheme were to be excused.
A very few words on his part served to open the susceptible heart of Miss Til, especially as they had spoken on the subject, though generally, before; and they were soon deep in the exchange of mutual confidences. Til cried quietly, so as not to wake her mother; and it distressed Charley very keenly to see her tears and to hear her declare that her sister-in-law had not the slightest regard for her opinion; that though perfectly civil to her, Margaret had met all her attempts at sisterly intimacy with most forbidding coldness; and that she felt sure any attempt to put their relation on a more familiar footing would be useless.
"She must have been very badly brought up, I am sure," said Til. "We don't know anything about her family; but I am sure she never learned what the duties of a wife and mother are."
Charley looked admirably at Til as she sadly uttered this remark, and his mind was divided between a vision of Til realising in the most perfect manner the highest ideal of conjugal and maternal duty, and speculating upon what might have been the polite fiction presented by Geoffrey to his mother and sister as an authentic history of Margaret's parentage and antecedents.
"Did Geoffrey seem cheerful and happy to-day?" he asked, escaping off the dangerous ground of questions which he could have answered only too completely.
"Well," replied Til, "I can't say he did. He talked and laughed, and all that; but I could see that he was uneasy and unhappy. How much happier he was when we were all together, in the days which seem so far off now!"