"Yes, Helen, there may be happiness in that;—but I may find difficulties, perhaps:—and if I do!—"
"I trust you will not.—I trust that ere long you will be able to withdraw yourself from a house so disgraced and afflicted as ours!"
"And leave you behind, Helen? You think that is part of my scheme?"
"How can you help it, Rosalind? You have just read my my mother's letter:—you see the style and tone in which she announces her right over my person;—and this from the mother I so doated on! I do assure you, Rosalind, that I often seem to doubt the reality of the misery that surrounds me, and fancy that I must be dreaming. Throw back your thoughts to the period of your first coming to us, and then say if such a letter as this can really come to me from my mother."
"The letter is a queer letter—a very queer letter indeed. And yet I am under infinite obligations to it: for had she not used that pretty phrase,—'for such time as I shall continue to be her legal guardian,'—it might never have entered my head to inquire for how long a time that must of necessity be."
"I rejoice for you, Rosalind, that the odious necessity of remaining with us is likely to be shortened; and will mix no malice with my envy, even when I see you turn your back for ever upon Cartwright Park."
"There would be little cause to envy me, Helen, should I go without taking you with me."
A tear stood in Rosalind's bright eye as she said this, and Helen felt very heartily ashamed of the petulance with which she had spoken. As a penance for it, she would not utter the sad prognostic that rose to her lips, as to the impossibility that any thing could give her power to bestow the freedom she might herself obtain.
Their return seemed to be unnoticed by every individual of the family except Henrietta. She saw the carriage approach from her own room, and continued to waylay Rosalind as she passed to hers.
"I know the sight of me must be hateful to you Miss Torrington," she said, "and I have been looking out for you in order that the shock of first seeing me might be over at once. Poor, pretty Helen Mowbray!—notwithstanding the hardness of heart on which I pique myself, I cannot help feeling for her. How does she bear it, Miss Torrington?"