"Yes," said Annie gently, "I know you are both very kind; but it cannot be. You saw that yourself, dear Lady Beauport, and consented to my entering on so different a life. You see I could not combine the two; and I have new duties now--"
"Nonsense, Annie!" said Lady Beauport angrily. "You will not come because of Lionel,--that is the truth. Well, he is not to be at home at all; he is going away to a number of places: he likes any place better than home, I think. I cannot understand why you and he should disagree so much; but if it must be so, I suppose it must. However, you will not meet him now." And Lady Beauport actually condescended to reiterate her request; but she had no success. Annie had resolutely broken with the old life, which had never suited her fresh, genial, simple tastes; and she was determined not to renew the tie. She knew that she was not in any true sense necessary to Lady Beauport's happiness; she was not ungrateful for such kindness as she had received; but she was a sensible girl, and she made no mistake about her own value, and the true direction in which her duty, her vocation lay. So she steadily declined; but so gently that no offence was taken; and made inquiry for Lord Beauport. The worried expression which had gradually marred the high-bred repose of Lady Beauport's face increased as she replied, and there was a kind of involuntary confidence in her manner which struck Annie with a new and painful surprise. Lord Beauport was well, she said; but he was not in good spirits. Things seemed to be wrong with them somehow and out of joint. Then the elder lady, seeing in the face of her young listener such true sympathy, thawed suddenly from her habitual proud reserve, and poured out the bitterness of her disappointment and vain regret. There was a tone of reproach against Annie mingled with her compliant, which the girl pityingly passed over. If Annie had but liked Lionel; if she would but have tried to attract him, and keep him at home, all might have been well: but Annie had imbibed poor Arthur's prejudices; and surely never were parents so unfortunate as she and the Earl in the mutual dislike which existed between their children. Lady Beauport did not want to justify Lionel entirely--of course not: but she thought he might have had a better chance given him in the first instance. Now he had greatly deteriorated--she saw that: she could not deny it; and her "granted prayer" for his return had not brought her happiness.
Annie listened to all this with a swelling heart. A vision floated before her tearful eyes of the lost son, who had been so little loved, so lightly prized; whose place the brother preferred before him had taken and disgraced; and a terrible sense of retribution came into her mind. Too late the father and mother were learning how true his judgment had been, and how valuable his silent influence. Time could only engrave that lesson more and more deeply on their hearts; experience could only embitter it--its sting was never to be withdrawn. They had chosen between the two, and their choice, like Esau's, was "profane." Lady Beauport spoke more and more bitterly as she proceeded. The softening touch of grief was not upon her--only the rankling of disappointment and mortification; only the sting of a son's ingratitude, of discovering that in return for the sacrifice of principle, self-respect, and dignity to which she had consented for Lionel's sake, she had not received even the poor return of a semblance of affection or consideration.
The hardness of Lionel's nature was shown in every thing his mother said of him--the utter want of feeling, the deadness of soul. Annie felt very sad as she listened to Lady Beauport's melancholy account of the life they had fallen into at the great house. She was oppressed by the sense of the strangeness of the events which had befallen, and in which the Countess had, all unconsciously, so deep an interest. It was very sad and strange to remember that she was detailing the conduct of the man whose baseness had enabled Margaret to lay Geoffrey's life in ruins under Geoffrey's own roof. It was terrible to Annie to feel that in her knowledge there was a secret which might so easily have been divulged at any moment, and which would have afflicted the vexed and mortified woman before her more deeply than any thing that had occurred. Lady Beauport was not tender-hearted; but she was a high-minded gentlewoman, and would have been shamed and stricken to the soul had she discovered the baseness of her son in this particular instance. She had fondly flattered herself into a belief that the crime which had been so inadequately punished was only a folly; but there was no possibility of such a reading of this one, and Annie was glad to think that at least the pang of this knowledge was spared to Lady Beauport. She could say nothing to comfort her. In her inmost heart she had an uneasy, unexplained sense that it was all the just retribution for the conduct of Arthur's parents towards him, and hopelessness for the future of a family of which Lionel formed a member took possession of her.
"He is so disagreeable, so selfish, Annie," continued Lady Beauport, "and O so slangy; and you know how his father hates that sort of thing."
"It is better that he should be away, then, for a little," said Annie, trying to be soothing, and failing lamentably.
"Well, perhaps it is," said Lady Beauport; "and yet that seems hard too, when I longed so much for his return, and when now he has every thing he wants. Of course, when he was only a second son, he had excuses for discontent; but now he has none, and yet he is never satisfied. I sometimes think he is ill at ease, and fancies people are thinking about the past, who don't even know any thing about it, and would not trouble themselves to resent it if they did. But his father does not agree with me, Annie: he will not give Lionel credit for any thing good. I cannot make out Lord Beauport: he is much more cold and stern towards Lionel than he need be, for he is not so careless and inconsiderate towards his father as he is towards me. He seems to have taken up poor Arthur's notions now, and to judge Lionel as severely as he did. He does not say much; but things are uncomfortable between them, and Lord Beauport is altered in every way. He is silent and dispirited; and do you know, Annie, I think he grieves for Arthur more than he did at first?"
Distress and perplexity were in Lady Beauport's face and voice, and they went to Annie's gentle heart.
"Try not to think so much of it," she said; "circumstances may alter considerably when Lionel gets more settled at home, and Lord Beauport has had time to get over the irritation which his return occasioned him."
"He resents your having left us more bitterly than any thing, Annie. He constantly speaks of you in the highest terms of praise, and wishes you back with us. And so do I, my dear, so do I."