“Don’t stop me, aunt,” cried Sage, excitedly; and, running up-stairs, she shut herself in the room, threw herself upon her knees by her bed, and covered her face with her hands, sobbing as if her heart would break.
“She’s been having a quarrel with him,” said Mrs Portlock to herself, “or she wouldn’t take on like that: They must be getting on then, or they wouldn’t quarrel.”
Mrs Portlock paused here to go and scold one of the maids for picking out all the big lumps of coal and leaving the small, but she came back into the kitchen to think about her niece.
“He’s a deal better than Luke Ross,” she said to herself, “for Luke’s only a tradesman after all. There’s no mistake about it, he means our Sage; and where, I should like to know, would he find a better girl?”
There was a pause here, during which Mrs Portlock indulged in a few retrospects concerning Rue, and the time when she was in such trouble about Frank.
“But Cyril is a better disposed young man than his brother, I am sure,” she said, half aloud. “He is his mother’s favourite too. I wonder what Mrs Mallow will say!”
Mrs Portlock said this aloud, and then stopped short, alarmed at her own words, for she called up the face of the calm, dignified Rector entering the place, looking at her reproachfully, and ready to blame her for her assumption in encouraging his son’s visits.
“Oh, my gracious!” she ejaculated, half in horror, for her imagination for the time began to run riot, and she saw that, even if Cyril Mallow was very fond of Sage, and even if Sage returned his love, matters would not run quite so smoothly as she had anticipated.
“I’m sure she’s as good as he,” she exclaimed, by way of indignant protest to the accusations of her conscience; but, all the same, she was now brought face to face with the consequences of her tacit encouragement of Cyril Mallow’s visits.
“And I’m sure we’re as well off as they are,” she added, after a pause. But, all the same, her conscience would not be quieted, and Mrs Portlock was on the point of going up to her niece’s room, when, with a fresh qualm of dread, though she hardly knew why, she saw her husband come striding up toward the house.