My heroines have grown up into young women since we last saw them idling on the sands; and it is proper I should at once give some idea of their appearance. Rose and Blanche, children by the first wife, are very unlike their sister Violet, the only child of the second Mrs. Vyner: they are fair as Englishwomen only are fair; she is dark as the children of the south are dark. They are plump and middle-sized; she is thin and very tall. They are settling into rounded womanhood; she is at that undeveloped "awkward age" when the beauty of womanhood has not yet come to fill the place of the vanished grace of childhood.
Two prettier creatures than Rose and Blanche, it would be impossible to find. There were sisterly resemblances peeping out amidst the most charming differences. I know not which deserved the palm; Rose, with her bright grey eyes swimming in mirth, her little piquant nose with its nostrils so delicately cut, her ruddy pouting lips which Firenzuola would with justice have called 'fontana de tutte le amorose dolcezze,' her dimpled cheeks; and the whole face, in short, radiant with lovingness and enjoyment. Shakspeare, who has said so many exquisite things of women, has painted Rose in one line:—
Pretty and witty, wild, and yet, too, gentle.
But then Blanche, with her long dreamy eyes, loving mouth, and general expression of meekness and devotion, was in her way quite as bewitching. As for poor Violet, she was almost plain: it was only those lustrous eyes, so unlike the eyes of ordinary mortals, which redeemed her thin sallow face. If plain, however, it has already great energy, great character, and a strange mixture of the most womanly caressing gentleness, with haughtiness and wilfulness that are quite startling. Those who remember her as a lovely child, prophesy that she will become a splendid woman.
From the three girls, let us turn our eyes to the strange stepmother which fate—or rather foolishness and cunning—had given them.
Mary Hardcastle, at the age of twenty, was placed in perhaps the most critical position which can await a young woman, viz. that of stepmother to girls very little younger than herself. In that situation, she exhibited uncommon skill; the very difficulties of it were calculated to draw out her strategetical science in the disposition of her troops; and certainly few women have ever arranged circumstances with more adroitness than herself. She was a stepmother indeed, and the reader anticipates what kind of stepmother; but she was too cunning to fall into the ordinary mistake of ostensibly assuming the reins of government. Apparently, she did nothing; she was not the mistress of her own house; she never undertook the management of a single detail. A meek, submissive wife, anxious to gain the affection of her 'dear girls;' trembling before the responsibilities of her situation, she not only deluded the world, but she even deceived Captain Heath, and almost reconciled him to the marriage. Nay, what was more remarkable, she deceived the girls—at least, the two elder girls. They were her companions—her pets. Before people, she adored them; in private, she gave them pretty clearly to understand that all their indulgences came from her; and all their privations from their father. It was her wish, indeed, that her dear girls should want for nothing, but papa was so obstinate—he could not be persuaded.
Strange discrepancies between word and deed would sometimes show themselves, but how was it possible to doubt the sincerity of one whose language and sentiments were so kind and liberal? She herself trembled before her husband, and often got the girls to intercede for her. The natural consequence was that they soon became convinced that papa was very much altered, and that as he grew older he grew less kind.
Altered he was. Formerly he had secluded himself in his study, interfering scarcely at all in family arrangements, making few observations upon what his children did; and if not taking any great interest in them, at least behaving with pretty uniform kindness. Now he was for ever interfering to forbid this, to put a stop to that; discovering that he "really could not afford" that which hitherto he had always allowed them; and, above all, discovering that his daughters were always trying to "govern" in his house.
Violet alone was undeceived. She had always hated Mary Hardcastle, without precisely knowing why; now she hated her because occupying the place which her dear mother had occupied, and that, too, in a spirit of hypocrisy evident in her eyes. Violet, therefore, at once fixed the change in her father upon her stepmother. How it was accomplished, she knew not; but she was certain of the fact.
The mystery was simple. Meredith Vyner, like all weak men, had an irresistible tendency to conceal his weakness from himself, by what he called some act of firmness. He would have his own way, he said. He would not be governed. He would be master in his own house. Mrs. Vyner saw through him at a glance. Wishing to separate him from his children, and so preserve undisputed sway over him, she artfully contrived to persuade him that he had always suffered himself to be governed by his children, and that he had not a will of his own. Thus prompted, he was easily moved to exert his authority with some asperity whenever his wife insinuated that it was disregarded; and he established a character for firmness in his own eyes, by thwarting his daughters, and depriving them of indulgences.