“Yes, dear,” said Miss Julia, in a prattling way. “You’ve done scolding now, sister, have you not?”
“Yes,” said Miss Twettenham; “but I wish to speak seriously for a minute or two, and the present seems a favourable opportunity for Grey Stuart to hear.”
The younger sisters placed the fair young girl in a chair between them, and each held a hand, while Miss Twettenham drew herself up stiffly, hemmed twice, and began:
“My dear Miss Stuart—I—I—Oh, dear me! Oh, dear me!”
The poor old lady burst into a violent fit of sobbing as she rose from her seat, for nature was stronger than the stiff varnish of art with which she was encrusted; and holding her handkerchief to her eyes, she crossed the little space between them, and sank down upon her knees before Grey Stuart, passing her arms round her and drawing her to her breast.
For a few minutes nothing was heard in the stiff old-fashioned drawing-room but suppressed sobs, for the younger sisters wept in concert, and the moist contagion extended to Grey Stuart, whose tears fell fast.
There was no buckram stiffness in Miss Twettenham’s words when she spoke again, but a very tender, affectionate shake in her voice.
“It is very weak and foolish, my dear,” she said, “but we were all very much upset; for there is something so shocking in seeing one so young and beautiful as Helen Perowne deliberately defy the best of advice, and persist in going on in her own wilful way. We are schoolmistresses, my dear Grey, and I know we are very formal and stiff; but though we have never been married ladies to have little children of our own, I am sure we have grown to love those placed in our care, so that often and often, when some pupil has been taken away to go to those far-off burning lands, it has been to us like losing a child.”
“Yes—yes,” sobbed the younger sisters in concert.
“And now, my dear Grey, I think I can speak a little more firmly. You are a woman grown now, my dear, and I hope feel with us in our trouble.”