"Lady Beauport knows I will not remain in her house, Til; and she will soon see as plainly as I do that it is well I should not. The choice is between me and her son, and the selection is not difficult. Lionel Brakespere (I cannot call him by Arthur's familiar name) and I are not on speaking terms. He knows that I am acquainted with his crimes; not only those known to his family, but those which he thought death had assisted him to hide. I might have concealed my knowledge from him had he not dared to insult me by an odious pretence of admiration, which I resented with all my heart and soul. A few words made him understand that the safest course he could pursue was to abandon such a pretence, and the revelation filled him with such wrath and hatred as only such a nature could feel. Why he has adopted a line of behaviour which can only be described as down-right savage rudeness--so evidently intended to drive me out of the house, that Lord and Lady Beauport themselves see it in that light--I am unable to comprehend. I have sometimes fancied that he and his mother have quarrelled on the matter; but if so, he has had the best of it. However, there is no use in discussing it, Til; my home is broken up and gone from me; and if your mother will not take me under her charge until Geoffrey comes home, and advises me for the future, I must only set up somewhere with a companion and a cat."
Annie smiled, but very sadly; then she continued:
"And now, Til, I'll tell you how we will manage. First, we will get the mother's leave, and I will invite myself on a visit here, to act as your bridesmaid, you see, and--"
"Charley has been talking to you, Annie!" exclaimed Miss Til, starting up in mingled indignation and amusement: "I see it all now--you have been playing into each other's hands."
"No, indeed, Charley never said a word to me about it," replied Annie seriously; "though I am sure if he had, I should have done any thing he asked; but, Til, do let us be earnest,--I am serious in this. I don't want to make a scandal and a misery of this business of my removal from Lord Beauport's; and if I can come here to be your bridesmaid, in a quiet way, and remain with your mother when you have left her, it will seem a natural sort of arrangement, and I shall very soon, heiress though I am, drop out of the memory of the set in which I have lately moved. I am sure Geoffrey will be pleased; and you know that dear little Arthur is quite fond of me already."
It is unnecessary to report the conversation between the two girls in fuller detail. Mrs. Maurice carried her point; the consent of Mrs. Ludlow to the proposed arrangement was easily gained; and one day the fine carriage with the fine coronets, which had excited the admiration of the neighbourhood when Miss Maurice paid her first visit to Geoffrey Ludlow's bride, deposited that young lady and her maid at Elm Lodge. A few days later a more modest equipage bore away Mr. and Mrs. Potts on the first stage of their journey of life.
"And so, my dear Annie," wrote Geoffrey to his ex-pupil, "you are established in the quiet house in which I dreamed dreams once on a time. I continue the children's phrase, and say 'a long time ago.' I am glad to think of you there with my mother and my poor little child. If you were any one but Annie Maurice, I might fear that you would weary of the confined sphere to which you have gone; but, then, it is because you are Annie Maurice that you are there. Sometimes I wonder whether I shall ever see the place again which, if ever I do see it, I must look upon with such altered eyes. God knows: it will be long first--for I am wofully weak still. But enough of me. My picture goes on splendidly. When it is finished and sent home to Stompff, I shall start for Egypt. I suppose many a one before me has tried to find the waters of Lethe between the banks of Nile."
Charley Potts and Til were comfortably settled in the house at Brompton, where Til guarded the household gods with pious care, and made Charley uncommonly comfortable and abnormally orderly. Mrs. Ludlow and her young guest led a tranquil life at Elm Lodge. Annie devoted herself to the old lady and the child with a skilful tenderness partly natural to her and partly acquired by the experiences of her life in her rural home, and within the scene of Caterham's lengthened and patient suffering. The child loved her and throve under her charge; and the old lady seemed to find her "cross" considerably less troublesome within the influence of Annie's tranquil cheerfulness, strong sense, and accommodating disposition. The neighbourhood had taken to calling vigorously and pertinaciously on Mrs. Ludlow and Miss Maurice. It approved highly of those ladies; for the younger was very pleasant, not alarmingly beautiful, reputed to be very rich, and acknowledged not to "give herself airs;" while the elder was intensely respectable--after the fashion dear to the heart of Lowbar; and both went to church with scrupulous regularity. Dr. Brandram was even more cordial in his appreciation of Annie than he had been in his admiration of Margaret; and the star of Elm Lodge was quite in the ascendant. A few of the members of the great world whom she had met in the celestial sphere of St. Barnabas Square found Annie out even at Elm Lodge, and the apparition of other coronets than that of the Beauports was not unknown in the salubrious suburb. Lady Beauport visited Miss Maurice but rarely, and her advent seldom gave Annie pleasure. The girl's affectionate and generous heart was pained by the alteration which she marked more and more distinctly each time that she saw the cold and haughty Countess, on whose face care was fast making marks which time had failed to impress.
Sometimes she would be almost silent during her short visits, on which occasions Mrs. Ludlow was wont to disappear as soon as possible; sometimes she would find querulous fault with Annie--with her appearance and her dress, and her "throwing herself away." Sometimes Annie felt that she was endeavouring to turn the conversation in the direction of Lionel; but that she invariably resisted. It chanced one day, however, that she could not succeed in preventing Lady Beauport from talking of him. Time had travelled on since Annie had taken up her abode at Elm Lodge, and the summer was waning; the legislative labours of the Houses had come to an end, and Lord and Lady Beauport were about to leave town. This time the Countess had come to say goodbye to Annie, whom she found engaged in preparations for a general flitting of the Elm-Lodge household to the seaside for the autumn. Annie was in blooming health, and her usual agreeable spirits--a strong contrast to the faded, jaded, cross-looking woman who said to her complainingly,
"Really, Annie, I think you might have come with us, and left your friends here to find their autumnal amusements for themselves; you know how much Lord Beauport and I wished it."