“She was, Gentlewoman,” answered Lettice, looking up at Mrs Rookwood, and beginning to wish herself at home again. Might she slip away? “May I pray you of the time?”
Mrs Rookwood was neither of wealth nor rank to carry a watch, so she went to look at the clock before replying, and Aubrey came up with Mr Stone.
“Why, where is gone Mrs Dorothy?” asked the former, knitting his brows.
“All the beauty has not departed with her,” responded Mr Stone gallantly, bowing low to Lettice, who felt more and more uncomfortable every minute.
“’Tis on the stroke of four, my dear,” said Mrs Rookwood, returning: “but I beg you will not hurry away.”
“Oh, but I must, if you please!” answered Lettice, feeling a sensation of instant and intense relief. “Grandmother bade me not tarry beyond four o’clock. I thank you very much, Gentlewoman, and I wish you farewell.—Aubrey, you will come with me?”
Aubrey looked extremely indisposed to do so, and Lettice wondered for what reason he could possibly wish to stay: but Mrs Rookwood, hearing of Lady Louvaine’s order, made no further attempt to delay her young guest. She called her daughters to take their leave, and in another minute the Golden Fish was left behind, and Lettice ran into the door of the White Bear. She went straight upstairs, and in the chamber which they shared found her Aunt Edith.
Lettice had no idea how uneasy Edith had been all that day. She had a vague, general idea that she was rather a favourite with Aunt Edith—perhaps the one of her nieces whom on the whole she liked best: but of the deep pure well of mother-like love in Edith’s heart for Dudley Murthwaite’s daughter, Lettice had scarcely even a faint conception. She rather fancied herself preferred because, as she supposed, her mother had very likely been Aunt Edith’s favourite sister. Little notion therefore had Lettice of the network of feeling behind the earnest, wistful eyes, as the aunt laid a hand on each shoulder of the niece, and said—
“Well, Lettice?”
“Aunt Edith,” was the answer, “if that is the world I have been in to-day, I hope I shall never go again!”