CHAPTER THE EIGHTEENTH.
BROKEN OFF.
As I asked myself this question, with an unerring premonition that the time would soon come when my mother and I would be separated, I heard her tapping lightly at the door. She was not in the habit of leaving her guests, and I was surprised and perplexed at seeing her.
"Your father and Mrs. Murray are having a game of chess," she said, answering my look of astonishment. "We can be alone together half an hour. And now tell me what is the matter? There is something going wrong with you."
She sank down weariedly into a chair, and I knelt down beside her. It was almost harder to tell her than to tell Julia; but it was worse than useless to put off the evil moment. Better for her to hear all from me before a whisper reached her from any one else.
"Johanna came here," she continued, "with a face as grave as a judge, and asked for Julia in a melancholy voice. Has there been any quarrel between you two?"
She was accustomed to our small quarrels, and to setting them right again; for we were prone to quarrel in a cousinly fashion, without much real bitterness on either side, but with such an intimate and irritating knowledge of each other's weak points, that we needed a peace-maker at hand.
"Mother, I am not going to marry my cousin Julia," I said.