“Oh, I don’t blame you,” said Rhoda, impetuously. “’Tis no fault of yours. If she’d done it now, lately, I might have thought so. But a will that was made before either you or me was born—” Rhoda’s grammar always suffered from her excitement—“can’t be your fault, nor anybody else’s. But ’tis a shame, for all that. She’d no business to let me go on all these years, expecting to have everything, and knew all the while her will wasn’t right made. ’Tis too bad! My Lady Betty!—Mrs Dorothy!—don’t you think so?”
“My dear,” said Lady Betty, “I am indeed grieved for your disappointment. But there is decorum, my dear Mrs Rhoda—there is decorum!”
“No, my dear,” was Mrs Dorothy’s answer. “I dare not call anything bad that the Lord doth. Had it been His will you should have White-Ladies, be sure you would have had it.”
“Well, you know,” said Rhoda, in a subdued tone, and folding one of her black gauze ribbons into minute plaits, “of course, one can’t complain of God.”
“Ah, child!” sighed Mrs Dorothy, “I wish one could not!”
“O my dear Mrs Rhoda, I feel for you so dreadfully!” accompanied the tragically clasped hands of Mrs Clarissa. “My feelings are so keen, and run away with me so—”
“Then let ’em!” said Mrs Jane Talbot’s voice behind. “Mine won’t. My dears, I’m sorry you’ve lost Madam. But as to the money and that, I’ll wait ten years, and then I’ll tell you which I’m sorry for.”
“Well, I’m sorry for both of you,” added Mrs Eleanor Darcy. “I don’t think, Mrs Phoebe, my dear, you’ll lie on roses.”
No one was more certain of that than Phoebe herself.
She wrote a few lines to her mother, which went inside Mr Dawson’s letter. Mrs Latrobe was in service near Reading. Her daughter felt sure that she would lose no time in taking possession. The event proved that she was right. The special messenger whom Mr Dawson sent with the letters returned with an answer to each. Phoebe’s mother wrote to her thus:—